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THE EARLY YEARS 



OF 



ALEXANDER SMITH 



THE EARLY YEARS 



ALEXANDER SMITH, 



POET AND ESS A VIST 



9L ^tuUp for fating gBtih 



CHIEFLY REMINISCENCES OF TEN YEARS' COMPANIONSHIP 



REV. T. BRISBANE. 



"V 





SLonfcan : 

HODDER & STOUGHTON, 
27, Paternoster Row. 

MDCCCLXIX. 



,SsBs 



" We can remember when we knew only the outer childish rim, 
and from the crescent guessed the sphere." — Dreamthorp. 



PREFACE. 



Various sketches of Alexander Smith have 
already been published since his death. These, 
however, have been only the brief reminiscences 
of loving friends of his later years. They may be 
said to commence with his career of authorship. 
Their writers seem to have known little of his 
earlier years of education, aspiration, struggle, and 
preparatory toil. The information they give of 
this, the most interesting, instructive, and exem- 
plary period of his life, consists of little more than 
the date and place of his birth, and the trade to 
which he served apprenticeship. What has thus 
been published was indeed worthy of being so ; 
but what has been left untold is none the less 
worthy of being recorded. His youth was as pure 
and noble as his manhood. No part of it now 



vi PREFACE. 

demands concealment by the hand of charity. 
There is consequently a very general regret among 
his earliest acquaintances and friends that a fuller 
account of those days has not been written : and 
several of them, because I was then for several 
years most closely associated with him in friend- 
ship, and so had ample means of knowing " his 
stream of life from fount to sea," having frequently 
urged upon me to write such an account, I, at 
length, so far complied as to give, in the columns 
of a weekly local journal, a short narrative to its 
limited number of readers. This, however, so far 
from satisfying seemed to increase the desire it was 
designed to gratify ; and, consequently, further 
pressed both by old and several new friends who 
happened to read that partial account, and whose 
judgment I cannot but respect, I have ventured 
to lay this fuller volume before the general public. 
If I have done so too hastily, it may, perhaps, be 
deemed pardonable in his earliest friend to have 
been easily induced to place, though last, some 
tangible tribute of affectionate remembrance on a 



PREFACE. 



grave where so many have already, in one form or 
other, laid theirs. 

The only requisite I possess for the task I have 
undertaken, is a fuller knowledge of Mr. Smith's 
early years than others may have. This advan- 
tage, however, is counterbalanced by a fear lest my 
unpractised pen may, after all, fail justly to present 
the well-known features of so fair a life before the 
reader's view. Still I cling to the hope that, with 
a hand moved by affection and steadied and re- 
strained by truth, the work may be so done that 
the limner and his art may be forgotten, and the 
face growing before him on these pages, alone 
command the attention of the reader, — or at least 
so command it, that he and the critic shall find 
it easy to exercise charity sufficient to cover any 
multitude of literary sins which a tyro in book- 
making may commit. 

I aim not at praising the dead ; and should I 
seem to praise, it is because praise I must, where 
true portraiture itself is praise 3 

As to method, I follow the example of those 



viii PREFACE. 



who have preceded me ; by giving chiefly reminis- 
cences of that period of the poet's life best known 
to me. Doing so will indeed necessitate, however, 
the employment of the ego to an extent which — 
while I trust neither fulsome nor offensive to the 
generous reader — I would certainly have preferred 
to avoid, could I otherwise have told the story as 
well. After all, it may be better thus ; it is only 
now that reminiscences can well be given ; and by 
this method, which others have initiated, materials 
may best be furnished for a competent biographer 
in the future. So, poor and faulty as the work 
may be — 

' ' I go to plant it on his tomb 
That, if it can, it there may bloom ; 
Or dying, there at least may die." 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I 

BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. Page 

Parents — Place and date of birth — Reciprocated affection — Re- 
moval to Paisley — Education — Illness — Sister's death — First 
book read — Removal to Glasgow — School — Teacher — Design 
of the ministry frustrated — Leaves school — A mistake cor- 
rected — Enters a warehouse — Favourite authors — First poem 
— Nature of employment — Poetic scribbling — Personal ap- 
pearance — First love — Shopmates — Literary aspirations — 
Method of reading I 

CHAPTER II. 

THE ADDISONIAN SOCIETY. 

Smith becomes a member — His first essay — His interest and 
influence in the society — Its members described — Subjects on 
which he wrote — Decline of the society — Its influence on 
Smith 29 

CHAPTER III 

THE CLYDE. 

Smith's knowledge of scenery not derived from books — Our 
friendship commenced — Our favourite walk — Kenmuir — The 
Marriage Well — The poets read — Sunsets — An incident — Bon 
mots— Carmyle — Carmyle revisited — Changes — A singular 
experience — Bothwell Priory — Campsie Glen 45 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE HIGHLANDS. 

First trip — Arran — First pedestrian tour — Stirling — Bridge of 
Allan — Donne — Callander — An incident in church — Pass of 
Leney — A graveyard — "The Garden and the Child" — A 
letter — Bridge of Bracklin — Highland wit — The Trossachs — 
Echo — Loch Katrine — Loch Lomond — Tarbet — Glen Croe 
— Inverary — Home 64 

CHAPTER V. 

REVELATIONS. 

Our friendship — The poet silent — Feeling his way — Produces 
his MS. — Correspondence — An autobiographic letter — Pre- 
sentiment of early death — A singular poetic epistle — A pre- 
diction — Patient preparations 82 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 

Second pedestrian tour — Holy Loch — Figures — His memory — 
Kyles of Bute to Oban — Places around — Glencoe — Wearied — 
Strange lodging — Drinking song — Addisonian Soiree — A sad 
event — Poem " Barbara " — His manner of reading — One of 
his "fair shapes " — Appears in print — Admiration of Gilfil- 
lan's writings — Gilfillan's influence — Appeals to Gilfillan — 
Gilfillan's reply — Third pedestrian tour — Loch Goil — Inve- 
rary — Loch Awe — Ben Cruachan — Pass of Brandir — An un- 
fortunate Bath — Oban — Unwell — Rothesay — Stanley's grave 97 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE BARD AND HIS HERALD. 

First notice by Gilfillan — Gilfillan meets Smith — MSS. shown 
to Dr. Nichol— Smith and the Professor — " The Critic " — 



CONTENTS. 



Second notice — Effects of these articles — Introductions to new 
friends — A mistake corrected— His great teacher — Character 
of his genius — An early promise — Preparations for publica- 
tion — Origin of "A Life Drama" — Gilfillan's true position in 

relation to that work — Third highland tour — Dundee — Calls 
on Gilfillan — Loch Earn, etc. — The last of the " fair 
shapes" — A letter with love sonnet 121 

CHAPTER VIII. 

" A LIFE DRAMA : " ITS CRITICS, THE PUBLIC, AXD 
POET 

"A Life Drama " published — Its reception — Circumstances and 
mental state in which written and published — Fame, and its 
effect on the author — On others — Anecdotes — Sabbath ob- 
servance — His early religious spirit, hi verse — Evidences of — 
Causes of its temporary decadence — Warned by Gilfillan — 
Still retains this spirit — Leaves warehouse life — Removal 
from Glasgow — A trip to England — Correspondence — Trip 
to the highlands — Guest of Duke of Argyle — Wide fame — 
Begins a literary life — The effort fails 140 

CHAPTER IX. 

IN EDINBURGH. 

Becomes secretary of university — Feelings on settling there — A 
letter — Sydney Dobell — War Sonnets — A letter — Marriage — 
A letter anent it — YVardie — ;i City Poems'" — Decline of fame 
— Accusations — " Firmilian," its cause and influence — Ay- 
toun and Smith — "Edwin of Deira " — His prose works — 
Illness — Death — Burial — Monument .177 



THE EARLY YEARS 

OF 

ALEXANDER SMITH 



CHAPTER I. 

Bt'ftl) anti Bopfrcotu 

" One whispers here thy boyhood sung 

Long since its matin song, and heard 
The low love language of the bird 
In native hazels tassel-hung. 

The other answers, 'Yea, but here 
Thy feet have stray'd in after-hours 
With thy lost friend among the bowers, 

And this hath made them trebly dear. 5 "' 

Tennyson. 

TV^ILMARNOCK in the county of Ayr, and 
Paisley in the adjoining county of Ren- 
frew, have long maintained preeminence among 

B 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



the towns of Scotland in the number of their 
sons who have been endowed with poetic genius ; 
and Alexander Smith, singularly, had an early- 
connexion with both of these favoured seats of 
the Scottish muses. In the former he was born, 
while in the latter he passed his early boyhood 
and received the first elements of his educa- 
tion. 

Being thus a native of the county of Burns, and 
a nursling of the town of Tannahill and the 
Wilsons, it may not seem strange that his soul 
was imbued with a large measure of the poetic 
spirit. The mantle of endowment which fell upon 
him, however, was certainly not that of either of 
these bards. His poetic faculty differed greatly 
from that of any of these. Burns was intensely 
Scotch and Tannahill was only a little less so ; 
but in Smith's genius there are no vernacular 
indications whatever, either in language or senti- 
ment. In expression he is purely English ; in 
spirit broadly cosmopolitan. 

His father, Peter Smith, belonged to a village 



BIRTH AXD BOYHOOD. 



near Kilmarnock, quaintly called Old Rome, and 
was by trade a designer — at first of calico print- 
ing and afterwards of sewed muslins ; while his 
mother, whose maiden name was Helen Murray — 
a woman of remarkable mental endowment and 
tenderest maternal feeling — was a native of the 
Highlands. In 1829 they took up residence in 
a humble thatched house situated near the foot 
of Douglas Street, Kilmarnock ; and there on the 
last day of that year, Alexander, their first child, 
was born. In one of his productions entitled " A 
Boy's Poem," which forms part of his " City 
Poems," he has himself alluded to this fact in 
representing the "Boy" assaying to his mother— 

' ' It was the closing evening of the year, 
The night that I was bom. I laughed, and said— - 
' The old year brought me in his dying arms, 
And laid me in your breast ; his last task done, 
He went away, through whirls of blinding snow.' " 

Both of these his parents still live to mourn the 
early death of their first-born and gifted son. 
Between him and his mother there always existed 

B 2 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



one of the noblest instances of reciprocal affection 
that has ever been manifested in the family circle. 
In speaking of her on one occasion in his seven- 
teenth year, with great tenderness of emotion, he 
related that he had recently discovered as a fact in 
his own history, what he represents the " Boy's" 
mother, in the poem already quoted, saying in 
answer to her son's reference to the night of his 
birth :— 

" 'Tis sixteen years, 
And every night I've looked upon your sleep, 
Although you knew it not." 

To be first in maternal affection especially, 
seems to be one of the special blessings of primo- 
geniture, and this birthright Alexander Smith 
always possessed ; and while partiality towards a 
first-born has not unfrequently spoiled its object, 
it certainly did not do so in his case. He ever 
remained worthy of the affection bestowed upon 
him, and never did that love receive a better 
return than from him. He exhibited in youth 
that unyielding truthfulness which he has so highly 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 5 

extolled in "Alfred Hagart's Household;" while 
his gentleness, yet firmness of disposition and 
purity of conduct were such as to constrain affec- 
tion, which he ever answered with more than 
ordinary filial devotion towards her who gave it. 
His mother may earlier than others have per- 
ceived his remarkable genius, and esteemed him 
the more on that account ; but whether she did 
or not, the character of his opening manhood in 
a great city w^as such as could not but win a good 
mother's heart, while his unbounded reverence 
for her, on the other hand, was doubtless promo- 
tive in no small measure of manly virtue. Indeed, 
it always seemed to me that this reciprocal affec- 
tion, which I have seldom seen equalled, and 
never seen surpassed, w r as the real sunshine of 
his youth, and therefore demands special notice 
in tracing and recording the course of his life. 

Shortly after the passing of the Reform Bill in 
1832, and so while Alexander was only merging 
into boyhood, the trade of Kilmarnock fell into 
such a languishing state that Peter Smith, like 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



many others, was compelled to seek a livelihood 
elsewhere. And having at length secured a 
situation in Paisley, he removed with his family 
to that town in 1834, where they remained for 
several years, with a brief interval during which, 
from the vicissitudes of trade, they seem to have 
been forced back again to Kilmarnock. But they 
remained for only a brief period in that town 
on this occasion. Once more they left it, and now 
finally, by returning to Paisley. 

This early removal from Kilmarnock, may be 
regarded as the reason of no particular reference 
being found in his works to that town or its 
environs. No poet or literary man has drawn 
more largely — it might, perhaps, be said so largely 
— from his own life, history, and experience, or 
confined his descriptions more to scenes familiar- 
ised to him by actual residence, than Alexander 
Smith. You seldom find him far from home in his 
works. None of his readers require to be told 
where he has lived, except in this one instance. 
Kilmarnock is unquestionably the Spiggleton of 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 



" Alfred Hagart's Household," but it is not de- 
scribed in the novel as Greysley and Hawk- 
head are. In fact there are only a few incidental 
allusions in one of his latest works — " A Summer 
in Skye" — to indicate that he had ever been in 
Ayrshire. It sufficiently accounts for this that, he 
left Kilmarnock at too infantine an age for that 
town and its neighbourhood to have made any dis- 
tinct and lasting impressions on his imagination 
and memory. The poet's eye had not yet opened 
within him, and Ayrshire remained almost a terra 
incognita till near the end of his short life. It was 
in Paisley that his being opened to a perception of 
the beauties of nature and the charms .of literature. 
In this town — which he has compared to " an 
aviary of singing birds," called "the abode of poetic 
inspiration," and described so graphically towards 
the close of the second volume of " A Summer in 
Skye," and also under the name of Greysley in 
" Alfred Hagart's Household " — he spent his early 
boyhood, and acquired the elements of the art of 
reading. As far as school learning, is concerned, 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



that is nearly all that can be said regarding his 
education in Paisley. Partly owing to his resi- 
dence in that town also being only of short dura- 
tion, and from other causes immediately to be re- 
ferred to, his school attainments were of the most 
rudimentary character when the family again 
removed. At the time of that removal he was too 
young to have read the writings of Tannahill, 
Motherwell, Alex. Wilson, and John Wilson — 
better known as Christopher North, — or the nu- 
merous less illustrious poets of that remarkably 
poetic town ; and also too young to have become 
acquainted with, and been capable of appreciating, 
the scenery made classic by their walks, musings, 
and poems. The only part of the scenery around 
Paisley which had been painted in unfading poetic 
colouring on his youthful mind, was that stretching 
for two or three miles along the course of the 
Glasgow and Paisley Canal, near to which he 
resided ; and the impressions which he then re- 
ceived of that locality he has faithfully and 
felicitously expressed in " Alfred Hagart's House- 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 



hold." It was during a short sojourn, in after 
years, at the neighbouring village of Williams- 
burgh, that he began to ramble among 

" Gleniffer's bonny woods and braes." 

It would certainly be wrong to say that the last 
mentioned work, or, indeed, that any of Mr. 
Smith's works, is autobiographical ; yet in several 
of them, and especially in it, there is a great deal 
of the author's personal history, contemplated 
under a poetic atmosphere, wrought up, as no 
one even slightly acquainted with him and his 
family can fail to perceive. The original of almost 
every character in that novel is easily enough 
discoverable within the circle of his relatives and 
friends. In some instances, indeed, the likeness is 
closer than is commendable in fictitious writing ; 
but there is one character in that tale, the deline- 
ation of which could not offend the sensitiveness 
of any one, while it must charm every reader, 
and for the execution of which the writer deserves 
highest praise. It is that of little " Katy Hagart." 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



In sketching that character Mr. Smith was in- 
dulging one of the most hallowed recollections of 
his early days in Paisley, and of an event which he 
was often wont to refer to, but never without deep 
emotion. It was to him especially, but also to all 
connected with him, an ever sadly memorable 
event. It happened that he fell dangerously ill 
of fever when a boy, and for a short time his life 
was despaired of. At length, however, he slowly 
recovered, though at the cost of being slightly 
marred in appearance for life, as, through weak- 
ening or contraction of the nerves of one eye under 
the pow T er of the disease, it retained ever after 
a squint. In times of vigorous health this defect, 
though visible, was not great; but on occasion of 
any temporary indisposition, it became invariably 
increased, and so gave indication to his friends of 
his state of health. His constitution was also for a 
number of years, in fact, until he became publicly 
known, enfeebled by this fever. He was rendered 
peculiarly liable to take cold, which always induced 
a short, unpleasant, barking cough — a yearly com- 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. n 

plaint, which caused him and his family frequent 
concern. But worse than this befell : — 

" While yet a child 
He had a playmate in his summer sports, — 
Inseparable they were as sun and shade " — 

a sister, some two years or so younger than him- 
self, who was also stricken down by the fever, and 
who died of it before he had fully recovered, so 
that he saw her no more, and 

" For years his heart was darkened like a grave 
By a sepulchral yew. " 

Her death made a very deep and solemn im- 
pression upon his young spirit, and awakened 
within him his religious instincts, and also his 
poetic faculities. The memory of her fair young 
form, and life, and early death, remained fresh 
through after-years on his sensitive heart, and 
became ever increasingly surrounded with a glow- 
ing atmosphere of poetic radiance. Her death 
refined and enriched his being. It was to him 



12 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

so far gain. She became to him henceforth a 
companion angel — an unseen spiritual presence 
always near him. While still quite a young lad, 
therefore, he read often, with much melancholy 
fondness and tender emotion, Leigh Hunt's essay 
on " Deaths of Little Children," and Longfellow's 
" Footsteps of Angels." I have frequently heard 
him, with his wondrously impressive intonation 
of voice, quote especially the following words of 
Hunt — " Death arrested her with his kindly harsh- 
ness, and blessed her into an eternal image of 
youth and innocence." . 

But another important incident connected with 
his education happened during his convalescence 
at this time. He had never as yet read a book 
through, but his mother one day put into his still 
feeble hands "Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress," which 
entirely captivated his mind, excited his imagina- 
tion, and sent his thoughts wandering through 
dream-land to an extent which must rather have 
retarded than promoted his recovery to perfect 
health. The reader of " A Boy's Poem " will find 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 13 

there a reference to this fact of his history also, in 
the passage beginning — 

" In those dark days I was surprised with joy — 
The deepest I have found upon the earth. 
One night, when my weak limbs were drawing strength 
From meats and drinks, and long delicious sleep, 
I raised a book to kill the tedious hours — 
The glorious dreamer's," etc. 

These two incidents made him at once poetical in 
feeling and imaginative thought. The Highland 
servant girl too of "Alfred Hagart's Household," 
is not altogether a myth. The original of that 
character I have several times heard him speak 
of as either domesticated, or at least a frequent 
visitor, at his own home in Paisley, and her weird 
stories had also a considerable influence in stimu- 
lating his naturally poetic mind. But while he was 
thus under the power of these three teachers — 
death, Bunyan, and the narrator of Ossianic 
legends — the boy was removed from Paisley to 
Glasgow. 

After the family had settled in Glasgow, 



14 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Alexander was sent to prosecute his education at 
a school in John Street, which was conducted by 
Mr. Niel Livingstone, who ultimately became a 
minister of the Free Church of Scotland, and still 
labours with acceptance as pastor of the church 
connected with that denomination in the parish 
of Stair in Ayrshire. His love of learning, the 
readiness with which he acquired it, together with 
his seriousness of spirit and thoughtfulness of dis- 
position, induced his parents to entertain the desire 
of educating him for the Christian ministry in 
connexion with the Secession Church ; and at this 
time that was deemed by himself the most desir- 
able of all occupations. The necessities of the 
family, however, required that he should soon 
begin to do something towards his own support : 
and consequently, though the purpose was not at 
once wholly abandoned, he meantime left school, 
when he had received only a meagre education, 
being an entire stranger to the classics, only very 
partially acquainted with English grammar, and 
poorly versed in geography ; in short, he could 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 15 

read well, write well, and cast up ordinary 
accounts tolerably well. That was the whole 
amount of his school education.* Mr. Smith, 



* It is true that another account has been given of this matter. 
In Good Words of March 1867, appeared the following: "It 
is common to speak of such men who have not had the advantage 
of a University training, as more or less wonderful samples of self 
education, and Smith has in this way been described as ' self- 
taught.' In the sense of which it is true of every man of any force 
and originality, he was self-taught. But it would be a great 
mistake to forget that he had received the benefit of that wise 
provision which Scotland has for centuries made for the education 
of her children. Smith's early education embraced a good know- 
ledge of English, arithmetic, and geography ; some history and' the 
elements of mathematics and Latin. A youth so furnished with 
the capacity and will to carry on his education by the study of 
the best works in literature, need not, perhaps, form any subject 
of condescending wonder, when it is found that he can write good 
poetry and prose, and even prove himself in the kingdom of letters 
the peer of professors and senior wranglers." But there is a very 
palpable vein of exaggeration running through the whole passage 
regarding Smith's early advantages, from which this extract is 
taken. That "his early education embraced a good knowledge " 
of all the above branches is not correct. I speak what I know, 
and confidently affirm that, if ever he acquired a good knowledge, 
or any knowledge, of mathematics, it was after he went to Edin- 
burgh as secretary of the University. Certainly mathematics 



1 6 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

therefore, was not only a truly self-taught man, but 
he was so with merely the very ordinary school 
education usually given to a working man's son 
thirty years ago, to begin with. To state the plain 
truth in this matter is only to ascribe the more, 
and the due amount of honour to his memory, 
while it renders the lesson of his life all the more 
encouraging and stimulative to the youth of that 
class to which he belonged. Thus equipped then, 
when he was under twelve years of age — a period 
of life when it really was not possible to have 
acquired all the branches of education ascribed 
to him by some — the event happened which he 
has expressed in the following lines — 

" So on a summer morning I was led 
Into a square of warehouses, and left 
'Mong faces merciless as engine wheels." 

His object now was to learn his father's occupation, 



never formed any part of his early education, nor did a good 
knowledge of the elements of Latin ; for what he did learn of the 
rudiments of that language was under my tuition, several years 
after he had left school. 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 17 

which at that time was a lucrative one to at least 
a few talented individuals. He had formed no 
companionships previously at school, nor, while 
always frank and social with those near his own 
age among whom he toiled, did he form any real 
companionship among them for two or three years ; 
so that in the great city, 

" ' Mid the eternal hum, the boy clomb up 
Into a shy and solitary youth, 
With strange joys and strange sorrows.''' 

He had already read much for his years, and his 
mornings and evenings were still devoted to read- 
ing. " Books were his chiefest friends." The works 
of the English poets, particularly of Byron and 
Wordsworth, at this time delighted him most, for 
he had not yet formed acquaintance with Shelley, 
Keats, and Tennyson, who afterwards became his 
chief teachers. Next to poetry, he was addicted 
to the reading of history, travels, and novels. In 
novel reading, however, his natural literary taste 
made him eclectic. From his earliest days, Scott 
was his favourite in this department of literature, 

C 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



and after Scott came Cooper. Several of the 
American tales of the latter, which he read at a 
very early age, made a deep impression on his 
imagination, and constrained him to seek fuller 
knowledge of the scenery, history, and literature of 
that country. Among the first books of travels 
which he consequently read was Stephens' travels 
in South America ; and it, together with Cooper's 
novels, so excited his mind, that the first poem of 
any length which he composed was an American 
tale of love and war, entitled " Black Eagle," from 
the name of the hero of the piece, who was an 
Indian warrior. This poem was written rapidly 
about his sixteenth year, but was soon afterwards 
destroyed, being judged by his ripening genius 
unworthy of preservation. But it was by no means 
his first poetic effort. From earliest boyhood " his 
own heart made him a poet," and in school days 
he often indulged in writing verses. 

The warehouse in which he was first employed 
was that of Alexander Buchanan & Co., on the 
right hand of Queen Court, Queen Street. His 



BIRTH AXD BOYHOOD. j 9 

occupation here consisted in tracing the lines of 
sewed muslin designs with lithographic ink ; and 
as this process of " penning," as it is technically 
called, is wholly mechanical, though the first step 
towards designing, his mind had freedom to pursue 
its poetic fancies. It was, therefore, so far, an 
advantageous occupation for him, and he prized it 
on that account. The muses were with him all 
day at his work, and he encouraged and gave 
attentive ear to their w r hisperings. The piece of 
paper used under the hand of the penner, to 
prevent contact w r ith the prepared surface of the 
design, was often by night filled with hasty 
scribblings, and w r as then rolled up and deposited 
in his vest pocket. These scribblings were polished 
and expanded at home before the young poet 
retired to bed, or in the still hours of early 
morning. 

" Oft a fine thought would flush his face divine, 

As he had quaffed a cup of golden wine 

Which deifies the drinker : oft his face 

Gleamed like a spirit's in that shady place, 

While he saw smiling upward from the scroll 

The image of the thought within his soul." 

C 2 



20 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Then, moved by boyish ecstatic impulse, he would 
leap from his seat, seize its cushion in both hands, 
and bring it down with a sudden thwack upon the 
shoulders of his unsuspecting youthful neighbour, 
when a brief frolicsome encounter ensued. For 
these raptures, and other little eccentricities, his 
shopmates playfully dubbed him with the title of 
" Daft Sandie." He was at this time a long-limbed 
lad, with large unfilled bones, rather ungainly in 
appearance and careless in dress ; sallow in com- 
plexion, and of a somewhat sad expression of 
countenance, from precocious thoughtfulness, and 
of a diffident disposition. In the evening he might 
be seen walking homewards alone, the thumb of 
each hand generally thrust into his vest pocket, his 
head stooping forward till it nearly rested on his 
breast, and trudging with heavy gait and long 
strides like one accustomed too early to plod over 
soft ploughed land. His appearance then was, con- 
sequently, very unlike what it became in after years, 
and especially as he neared middle life, and indeed 
was by no means prepossessing. 



BIRTH AXD BOYHOOD. 21 

It was at this time, however, when about thirteen 
or fourteen years of age, that he first felt the tender 
passion of love, an event to which he refers in the 
following lines — 

" Love oped the dusty volume of my life, 
And wrote, with his own hot and hurrying hand, 
A chapter in fierce splendours. Then it was 
I built an altar, raised a flame to love, 
And a strong whirlwind blew the altar down, 
And strewed its sparks in darkness." 

The object of this his first and boyish affection, 
was a tall and graceful dark-haired and dark-eyed 
maiden, several years his senior to appearance, 
who was employed in the same warehouse, and 
whom he has celebrated in " A Boy's Poem," and 
also refers to in "A Life Drama" thus — 

" One, a queenly maiden fair, 
Sweepeth past me with an air : 
Kings might kneel beneath her stare ; 
Round her heart, a rose-bud free. 
Reeled I. like a drunken bee, 
Alas ! it would not ope to me." 

His affection for this damsel was a transitory one. 



22 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

He was speedily cured of it by discovering that she 
was affianced to another warehouse lad of maturer 
age, and henceforth she became only one of the 
"fair shapes which pace the garden of his memory." 
It was merely for poetic uses, and not because of 
any serious wound inflicted on his heart, that he 
cherished a fond remembrance of her in after years. 
I have a vivid recollection of seeing him almost 
daily about this time ; but it was some two years 
after, when he was designer in another house, that 
I became personally acquainted with him. When, 
towards the close of 1846, our friendship really 
commenced, he was employed in Messrs. John 
Robertson & Sons', at the corner of Exchange 
Square, Queen Street, near 

' ' Where merchants congregate, 
And where the mighty war-horse snorts in bronze." 

He has himself introduced his readers into the 
scene of his daily toils at this time, and favoured 
them with an imaginary conversation conducted by 
his fellow-workers, in the passage beginning at 
page 8 of " City Poems." Some of those among 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 23 

whom he wrought were young men of more than 
ordinary talent and culture. The verses of one 
occasionally graced the poet's corner of the city 
newspapers ; another wrote and published a drama, 
the scene of which was laid in the Noachian age ; 
while a third was a painter in water colours of very 
considerable ability. They all, however, regarded 
Sandie — as they familiarly named him — as their 
superior in genius and literary attainments though 
he was the youngest of all. 

One of the chief excellencies of Smith's genius 
consists in his graphic portraiture of persons, and 
curt but clear delineation of character. Few poets 
have equalled him in sketching off a character in 
one short sentence. His first efforts at full length 
portraiture were not very successful, but his power 
in this grew, and still was growing rapidly w r hen 
he died. The character of Bertha in " Edwin of 
Deira" is well sustained, and far surpasses any- 
thing of the same kind which he had previously done ; 
but even that is excelled by his after effort in the 
character of Miss Catherine Macquarrie in " Alfred 



24 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Hagart's Household." That is a most sym- 
metrical, natural, and noble character. It aston- 
ished all his friends, and its execution must have 
been contemplated by himself with much laudable 
pride ; for he was early sensible of his ability of 
accomplishment falling short of his ambition in 
dramatic delineation. In miniature painting, how- 
ever, he was an adept from his youth. His 
earliest works abound with inimitable miniatures, 
and he has seldom manifested this talent more 
happily than in describing his shopmates. Thus :— 

' ' He at my right hand ever dwelt alone ; 
A moat of dulness fenced him from the world. 
My left-hand neighbour was all flame and air — 
A restless spirit, veering like the wind ; 
And what a lover ! what an amorous heart ! 
In the pure fire and fervency of love, 
Leander, like the image of a star 
Within the thrilling sea, was scarce his match. 
His love for each new hero of a week 
No Hellespont could cool. Among the rest 
Sat one with visage red with sun and wind, 
As the last hip upon the frosted brier, 
When the blithe huntsman snuffs the hoary morn. 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 



~D 



" And there was one 

Who strove most valiantly to be a man ; 

Who smoked, and still got sick, drank hard, and woke 

Each morn with headache ; his poor timorous voice 

Trembled beneath the burden of the oaths 

His bold heart made it bear. 

* * * * •* 

' ' Harry's laughing face 

Filled with his mischievous and merry eyes." 

These are all true life-pictures which his early 
friends cannot fail to identify. 

Mr. Smith gave good promise of excelling in the 
profession of designer, had he fully devoted himself 
to it, but he never did so. He could not regard it 
as the profession of his life. His heart was too 
strongly inclined towards literature and poetry, 
and, consequently, he did not rise to the first rank 
as a designer. Very soon after entering a ware- 
house he ceased also to entertain the desire and 
prospect of becoming a preacher of the gospel. 
His own reasons for this shall be given anon in 
his own words. For several years he had, there- 
fore, no definite purpose of life-work before him. 
His growing ambition was to be a true poet, but 



26 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

he was, at the same time, convinced that some 
other occupation required to be pursued in order to 
gain a steady livelihood — hence the dictum — 

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, 
Are of imagination all compact," 

was not verified in his case. Meantime he was 
content to toil on and wait his day, doing all the 
while his best to serve his employers during ware- 
house hours ; and the fact that he was retained in 
the service of Messrs. Robertson for six or seven 
years, and then left it and the trade of designer 
simultaneously, and of his own accord, proves that 
he was a faithful and valued workman. During all 
these years of industrious toil, he was morning and 
night educating himself by reading, and cultivating 
his poetic talent by writing. He had become a 
most voluminous reader of all kinds of literature. 
His most intimate friends wondered how, with so 
little time at his command, he could amass such 
a knowledge of books as he possessed. He was 
endowed, however, with a most tenacious and 
ready memory. By his seventeenth year he knew 



BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 27 

better than most persons almost all the English 
poets from the times of Chaucer. But Keats and 
Tennyson were now his favourites. 

It was his custom about this time, to confine his 
reading and study for a period principally to one 
author, till he had mastered him, and then devote 
himself similarly to another. Thus, for a consider- 
able time, he read all he could lay his hands on of 
the works of Byron, with critiques on these, or what- 
ever had been written by others relating to the life 
and writings of that extraordinary genius. Shelley 
next for a while engaged his leisure hours ; then 
Coleridge, or Wordsworth, or Keats, Tennyson, 
Campbell, Thomson, Burns, Shakespeare, Spenser, 
Chaucer, had each a season of study given specially 
to him. And one of less wide fame than either of 
these, who became for a time a very great favourite, 
must not be forgot— Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law 
rhymer, His reading in other departments of 
literature, however, was of the most desultory and 
fortuitous nature, He had then a great partiality 
for editions of the poets in small volumes, 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



seemingly because he could carry them in his 
pocket to read in his rambles, or consult and re- 
fresh his memory with at any spare moment. In- 
deed, he was never to be found without some 
favourite book on his person. 



CHAPTER II. 

€i)t gU&ts'om'an &otitty. 

'• "Where once we held debate, a band 

Of youthful friends, on mind and art, 
And labour, and the changing mart, 
And all the framework of the land." 

Tennyson. 

TN the year 1846, a few young men, nearly all 
of whom were employed in warehouses 
formed themselves into a Literary Society for 
essay-writing and debate. This club met every 
Saturday evening ; and after it had been a few 
weeks in existence, Smith was introduced to its 
membership by " bright-eyed Harry," and I thus 
became more fully acquainted with him than I 
had been previously. Of this society he was, for 
the following seven years, a regular attender and 
the greatest ornament. Each member w r as neces- 
sitated by the rules to read in rotation an essay 



30 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

of his own composition, and it soon came to his 
turn to occupy the desk. The subject of his pre- 
lections I have forgot ; but I have a vivid 
recollection of the introduction, and also of the 
general impression made by the whole upon the 
members. The introduction was an elaborated 
picture, glowing with rich colouring, of Old Father 
Time sitting meditatively among the ruins of an 
old feudal pile by moonlight, with the roll of 
earth's history, partly unfolded, in his hand. The 
essay from its beginning took the members by 
surprise, and they listened unto the close with fixed 
silence and increasing admiration. When the 
essayist sat down, no one felt disposed to speak. 
Criticism was disarmed. At length only the most 
fervent eulogies were expressed. The appearing 
of " A Life Drama" did not make a more profound 
sensation on the public than the reading of his 
first essay did on the society that night. He 
had been previously almost silent as a member, 
but they had now discovered his ability, and he 
was tacitly by all placed first in membership. He 



THE ADDISONIAN SOCIETY. 31 

eave a ereat stimulus to the club. Till then the 
debates seemed generally most interesting, and 
the society was in danger of becoming an arena of 
wranglers ; but from that night the debates were 
doomed to a second place. The ablest members' 
hearts were made to glow with unwonted warmth 
in laudable emulation, and the writing of essays 
became henceforth a serious, earnest, and arduous 
affair. After one or two abortive attempts, 
several, made conscious of being too far distanced, 
withdrew from membership ; but their places were 
soon filled by others of superior ability. The 
society continued to be characterised by great 
enthusiasm till the end of winter, and the most 
literary of the members having found it a most 
genial and profitable scene of intercourse, proposed 
to continue in session during the summer months 
also ; but the less aspiring objected to this, and 
proposed an adjournment till the beginning of 
next winter, and these carried the vote. Smith 
and other three agreed among themselves, how- 
ever, to meet every alternate Saturday evening 



\ 



32 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

in a coffee-house. There a few others joined them 
during the summer, and by the commencement 
of the following winter, there were about twenty 
regular attenders. This club was now designated 
" The Addisonian Literary Society." Its regular 
place of meeting, during the greater part of its 
history, was in Mons. Simeon's class-room, at the 
corner of Frederick Street, in George Square. It 
was among the elite of its members that Smith 
found his inmost and almost sole circle of friend- 
ship, till he was brought into public notice by the 
Rev. Geo. Gilfillan. And although none of them 
possessed equal genius, or were so extensively 
read in general literature as he, several of them 
were young men of sufficient culture and mental 
endowment to constitute them not only worthy 
friends of his youth, but also acquaintances by 
whose intercourse he might and did profit. 
One, for example, though employed as an en- 
graver, and having no thought of aspiring to 
literary fame, possessed a tropical exuberance of 
imagination, which Smith ever admired, and 



THE ADDISOXIAX SOCIETY. 33 

which even surpassed his own, although it was 
less chaste and restrained. His essays were bur- 
dened with imagery, often, indeed, of the wildest, 
but always of the most original kind. Even his 
common conversation sparkled with metaphoric 
gems. The " Life Drama" is indebted to him for 
some of its many fine figures. I have a lively 
remembrance of sitting with him and Smith one 
night reading, with many pauses and interfacings 
of racy comment, and no little wild laughter, 
Gilfillan's " Bards of the Bible," as it came fresh 
from the press. Other two members of the club 
were students in the University, who now occupy 
pulpits of different denominations. Another was 
a diligent student of physical science, who while 
occupying one of the very humblest posts of un- 
skilled labour, was well known in the centre of 
the city as "the man with the book," from never 
being seen on even its busiest streets but threading 
his way with eyes fixed on the open pages of 
some volume ; and thus fitted himself for reading 
papers with credit before the Geological Society 

D 



34 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

of Glasgow, of which he was an honoured member, 
and, finally, by plodding mental industry rose to 
secure a place on the staff of the Government 
Survey. 

And there was one of most versatile genius 
and unbounded wit and comicality — " a fellow 
of infinite jest" — who unfortunately, failed to ful- 
fill the promise of his youth, and when last heard 
of by his early friends, by means of a letter he 
addressed from America to Smith in Edinburgh, 
described himself as having lived a curiously 
chequered life in the New World ; — at one time 
sailing with the bargemen on the Mississippi ; 
anon starring on the stage ; next smoking with 
members of Congress ; then bivouacking with 
wandering gipsies ; soon after drinking champagne 
with the President of the States ; and finally, 
having undertaken the editorship of an influential 
newspaper, solicited his old fellow-Addisonian, 
now secretary of Edinburgh University, to be- 
come his correspondent for Scotland. Another, a 
voracious reader and devoted student of natural 



THE ADDISOXIAX SOCIETY. 35 

philosophy, possessed two faculties in a degree 
that I have never known equalled in any other 
person — retentiveness of memory, and the sense 
of poetic taste. The latter faculty he seemed to 
possess with the quickness and keenness of an 
exquisite sense of touch, while his memory was 
so tenacious that I have heard him, shortly after 
having read two pages of poetry only once, repeat 
the whole almost perfectly. His essays were 
models of graceful diction. His powers of original 
thought and of ratiocination, however, were not 
equally great. The stores of other men, which 
lay in his mind, appeared to induce personal in- 
activity, and prevent the invigorating exercise of 
his own powers of cogitation ; for he often played 
the part of the plagiarist. He was withal a 
most eccentric genius, wearing at midsummer a 
top coat, close buttoned to the chin, and carrying 
a small copy of Shelley's poems in the breast 
pocket ; having his shirt collar rolled over in the 
style of Byron ; then changing it for a season 
after the manner of Keats, his next favourite bard. 

D 2 



36 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Slender in form and solitary in life, no one 
knew his relations, and he was never heard to 
speak of them. He seemed to have no senior 
friends. He was alone in the great city, ever 
copying the ways of men of literary eminence. 
Having read, as he said, of Dr. Johnson drinking 
sixteen cups of tea at a sitting ; he without ascer- 
taining the size of the cup, would, to the annoy- 
ance of his landlady, try to do so also, and so 
injured his stomach that he was confined to his 
room for two or three days. At length he became 
a Unitarian preacher, and went to England, taking 
with him a wife who doubtless soon cured him 
of his vagaries, and set reasonable limits to his 
tea drinking. Smith was wont to show great 
deference to his literary taste and judgment, and 
honoured him among the first to whom he 
privately submitted his poetry, and as one of the 
very few whom he confidentially consulted regard- 
ing sending his MS., to the Rev. George Gilfillan. 
It was to this member of the club also that Smith 
was first and chiefly indebted for his knowledge of 



THE ADDISONIAN SOCIETY. 37 

the names of our Scottish wild flowers, and the 
little acquaintance with botany which he acquired ; 
and together with him he also received, for a 
short time, from another Addisonian, lessons in 
the rudiments of the Latin language ; but neither 
of the two ever prosecuted that study to any pro- 
fitable extent. Smith visited this early friend 
and spent a day with him, on the occasion of his 
first trip to England after the publication of " A 
Life Drama." He may be regarded as the Wat 
of " Horton " — 

u Poor Wat ! once proud as chanticleer that struts 
Among his dames ; faint challenged, claps his wings 
And crows defiance to the distant farms — 
Now meekly sits beneath a shrewish voice, 
With children round his knee.*' 

Till his death Smith retained a tender regard 
for him and the other members of the Addisonian 
Society. 

The last time I had the pleasure of seeing him 
in Edinburgh, after inquiring, as he never failed 
to do, regarding several of them, he said, — "Well, 



38 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

that society did us both a vast amount of good ; 
for myself, I know I derived much benefit from it. 
Through its means I was first stimulated to com- 
position, and had my latent powers roused to 
action." When it was his night to read an essay 
there was always a full meeting of the members, 
and as each had the liberty of bringing a friend 
with him, there were generally a few strangers 
also present. Never but once, as far as I remem- 
ber, did he fail on these occasions to produce a 
carefully thought out and well composed paper. 
The minute book of the society, which is still 
carefully preserved by its last secretary, shows the 
following to be the subjects on which he wrote: 
" Intellect," " on Man," " the claims of History on 
Man," " on Religious Poetry," " Earnestness," " on 
Progress," " Addison," characterised in the minutes 
as " beautiful remarks " on that writer ; " Thoughts 
anent Life," commended for its composition, but 
condemned by the members for the gloomy and 
desponding view the essayist took of our present 
state of civilisation ; " Thoughts on Napoleon," 



THE ADDISONIAN SOCIETY. 



39 



"Thoughts on a Friend," "John Keats," "Ebenezer 
Elliott," " Burns as a National Poet." This, his last 
essay in the society, was read on November 13, 
1852, and was regarded as "not only the best and 
most finished of all Mr. Smith's productions, but 
also as the best essay ever read in the society." 
It appeared almost verbatim shortly afterwards 
in the short lived Glasgow Miscellany, of which 
Smith was editor ; and a considerable amount of 
it was made available in the exquisite life of 
Burns, which he prefixed to the edition of that 
poet's works which he edited in 1865. 

The fame which Smith at length suddenly 
acquired as a poet, by the pages of the Eclectic 
and Critic in 185 1, and 1852 proved indirectly 
the chief cause of the death of the Addisonian 
Society. Although it had now served, for him 
and his most intimate friends, the purpose for 
which they had joined it, he still loved it as a place 
of pleasant intercourse, and desired to remain 
connected with it ; but several of the members 
now treated him and spoke to him with such un- 



4 o ALEXANDER SMITH. 

wonted tokens of deference, on account of his rising 
fame, and made such allusions to his poetry as 
galled his manly spirit. They often brought also 
young students and silly literary aspirants to the 
club, who sat and so stared at the poet that the 
place became unendurable, and he consequently 
frequently failed to be present. With a few others 
he endeavoured to save the society by reconsti- 
tuting it from a limited selection of the oldest 
members, and changing the place of meeting ; 
but, after all, a few hilarious students from the 
country got in, and so changed the character of 
the club that Smith and his chief friends with- 
drew altogether, and it soon became defunct from 
lack of earnestness of purpose and sobriety of 
spirit. It had, however, served a good end. There 
have been clubs in the city of greater pretensions, 
which have had their praises sounded by eminent 
men ; but it may be questioned if any of them 
existed to better purpose than the Addisonian. 
It produced Alexander Smith. He himself, on 
the day on which it was arranged that he should 



THE ADDISONIAN SOCIETY. 41 

appear as a talc-writer in Good Words, confessed 
his indebtedness to it ; and if the public have in 
any measure benefited by his writings, they have 
indirectly at least profited in part by this club. 
Some of the passages and ornaments of his poems, 
too, were at least originally suggested to his mind 
by intercourse with its members. These tw T o lines, 
for example, describing the earth and heavens as 

1 ' A theatre magnificently lit 
For sorry acting, undeserved applause," 

occur in an essay read before the society, and 
still preserved by one of the members, w 7 ho had 
no idea he was writing poetry. I have also a vivid 
recollection of several times reading a letter 
addressed to Mr. Smith by an Addisonian in which 
— describing a melancholy drive he had in a gig, 
in a gloomy state of mind, from a railway station 
in Lanarkshire, on a dark wet night, — the original 
of the following graphic passage of " A Boy's 
Poem " occurred : — 

" I paused upon a drear bewildered road, 
Lined with dark trees, or ghosts, which only seemed 



42 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

A darker gloom in gloom, and far away 

A glare went up as of a sunken fire. 

* This is the land of death, and that is hell.' 

I cried, as I went on toward the glare : 

I climbed a bank of gloom, and here I saw 

A burning sea upon a burning shore — 

A lone man sitting black against the light ; 

The long black shadow stretching o'er the sands, 

Long as earth's sunset shades." 

The fine passage too in " A Life Drama," begin- 
ning — " My friend, a poet must ere long arise ; " is 
only the more melodious utterance of the im- 
passioned words of a brother Addisonian, ex- 
pressed in a colloquy on poets, carried on while a 
few of us were walking in the western outskirts of 
the city. 

It is true that Smith was not associated or 
connected in his youth with any of the recognised 
or distinguished literary men of Glasgow ; * still, 



* To say as a writer in Good Words, March, 1867, has done, 
in treating of his early education — " Smith had the advantage in 
Glasgow of intimate intercourse with men of cultivated literary and 
poetic powers. Among these were the late Professor Nicholl, Mr. 
J. Hedderwick, and Mr. Hugh Macdonald," is not a little mislead- 



THE ADDIS OXI AX SOCIETY. 43 

as this chapter may serve to show, he was not 
entirely isolated from genial and profitable society. 
Indeed, among the members of the Addisonian 
club, he may have enjoyed society more fitting his 
own years, educational acquirements, and mental 
growth, than he would then have done among men 
of more advanced culture and ripened experience. 
It is questionable if he would have found among 
more natured minds, a more inspiring and bracing 
sphere of self discipline in his earliest years than 
he did here. By the time he became known to the 
world, however, he had indeed outgrown all his 
Glasgow associates. The period had then arrived 
when the necessities of his genius and whole 
mental nature, required that he should be severed 
from these, and mix with men of larger growth 
as his friends and equals, And it was well for him 
that, when the ripeness of the occasion came, he so 



ing ; for the truth is, he did not know one of these individuals per- 
sonally till after George Gilfillan brought him into public notice, as 
shall be shown in the sequel of this narrative. 



44 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

readily found hands outstretched to welcome him 
within the desiderated sphere. His removal to 
Edinburgh, " residence in which is an education in 
itself/' as he has said, was well-timed, as it was 
very needful, and proved most advantageous. The 
truth is, no poet or literary man that has arisen 
from the ranks of the common people, has been 
more kindly dealt with in Providence, especially 
in the first stages of his career, than Alexander 
Smith. 



CHAPTER III. 

%\)t CIptie. 

" Oil I remember, and will ne'er forget 

Our meeting spots, our chosen sacred hours, 
Our burning words that uttered all the soul, 
Our faces beaming with unearthly loves, 
Sorrow with sorrow sighing, hope with hope 
Exulting, heart embracing heart entire." 

Pollock. 

T T has been asserted that Smith, previous to the 
publication of his first volume of poems, was 
almost wholly indebted to books for his knowledge 
of rural scenery, and the fact that he has notwith- 
standing given many admirable descriptions of 
such scenery, has been adduced as a proof of his 
eminent genius. This, how r ever, is a mistake, 
which has perhaps originated in understanding 
too literally such lines as — 

" For years and years continually were mine — 
The long dull roar of traffic, and at night 
The mighty pathos of the empty streets." 



46 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

The fact is, there is no attempt made by him in 
all his works, of describing scenery merely through 
acquaintance with books, unless it be in the pas- 
sage of "A Life Drama," beginning — "In the 
green lanes of Kent," or in the use of such phrases 
as " Lincoln Fens," and these can scarcely be 
called descriptions. And in this and subsequent 
chapters, it will be shown that, by the time he 
wrote his first book, he had seen and rambled 
among more of the rich scenery of Scotland than 
most of his countrymen have ever done. 

But, meantime, let us return to 1846, in order 
to follow another thread of his life story from that 
date. 

A few weeks after Smith's admission into the 
Addisonian Society, our intercourse commenced, 
which soon ripened into more than acquaintance- 
ship. On the evening of the last Saturday in 
October of that year, while passing along Argyle 
Street, purposing to get out of the city in quest of 
solitude, he suddenly accosted me, and proposed 
a walk previous to the assembling of our club. 



THE CLYDE. 47 



And as he had heard of my intention to enter 
college on the following Monday, we were speedily 
engaged in conversation on our respective hopes 
and aims in life. Mine were so far fixed, and 
interested him ; but his w r ere dim and uncertain. 
As he then informed me, however, he had till very 
recently ardently entertained a similar prospect 
to that which I was about to prosecute. Our 
conversation thus become close and confidential, 
as walking on, we left the city behind us, and 
journeyed several miles along the Cathcart Road, 
aided by the light of the Hutchiesontown furnaces. 
At length we returned to our club, no longer 
acquaintances but friends, and under a mutual 
promise to meet again on the afternoon of that 
day week. That was to me, and I hope in some 
measure also to him, a fortunate though accidental 
meeting. I had then no idea of the character and 
calibre of the youth I had ignorantly endeavoured 
o shun. The treasure of friendship, and the profit 
which in various ways I derived for years from that 
casual meeting, cannot be told nor estimated. 



48 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

11 An opulent soul 
Dropt in my path like a great cup of gold, 
All rich and rare with stories of the gods." 

And now 

" It is the proudest memory of my youth 
That I was his familiar and beloved." 

During the whole of the winter, we spent every 
Saturday afternoon together, and very rarely was 
there a third person present. Then as summer 
drew on, and the college had closed for the 
session, we met almost every night as he came 
out of the warehouse. This practice we con- 
tinued for more than six years. Talking much 
on many themes, we frequently conversed of per- 
sonal matters ; rehearsed each other's history, 
forecast our hopes, and told the secrets of the 
soul, as far as one may to his fellow-mortal, and 
as one can only do to the closest and sincerest 
friend in the spring of unsophisticated youth. 
Each summer evening when the sky was clear, 
we walked from eight till ten o'clock. Our 



THE CLYDE. 49 



favourite and most frequent path being " beside 
the river that we used to love." 

" Beneath the crescent moon on autumn nights, 

We paced its banks with overflowing hearts, 

Discoursing long of great thought-wealthy souls, 

And with what spendthrift hands they scatter wide 

Their spirit- wealth, making mankind their debtors. 
* * * * * 

Or haply talked of dearer personal themes, 

Blind guesses at each other's after -fate ; 

Feeling our leaping hearts, we marvelled oft 

How they should be unleashed, and have free course 

To stretch and strain far down the coming time." 

And on Saturday, when at an earlier hour than 
on the other days of the week, 

" Labour laid down his tools and went away — 
The park was loud with games, clear laughter shrieks 
Came from the rings of girls around the trees ; 
The cricketers were eager at their play, 
The stream was dotted with the swimmers' heads. 
Gay boats flashed up and down. 
■* . * * # 

We hurried on, 
Through all the mirth, to where the river ran, 
In the grey evening, 'tween the hanging woods," 

of sweet Kenmuir, "with a soul-soothing murmur." 

E 



50 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Many are the allusions to this wood in " A Life 
Drama " and the " City Poems." It was our 
favourite haunt during all these six years. There 
is no walk around Glasgow equal to that of about 
six miles, by the windings of the Clyde, to Ken- 
muir ; and during this time we must have enjoyed 
it at least twenty times each year — on the Satur- 
day afternoons. The wood affords some of the 
finest glimpses of sylvan and river scenery I have 
ever seen. With its changing moods, no lover of 
the beautiful can ever weary of it. The ground, 
moreover, is thickly carpeted with the richest 
variety of wild flowers ; and here with several of 
these we formed our first acquaintance. Whole 
beds of blue hyacinth fill the air with their deli- 
cious odour. 

' ' Oh, fair the wood on summer days, 
While a blue hyacinthine haze 
Is dreaming round the roots !" 

There, also, are beds of primrose, violet, cranes- 
bill, speedwell, starwort, woodruff; and it is the 
only place for many miles around the city where 



THE CLYDE. 51 



you will find the yellow globe-flower, or " lucken 
gowan " of the Ettrick Shepherd. This wood is 
less than a mile above the sweetly picturesque 
village or "clachan" of Carmyle. where the Clyde 
flows murmuringly over a crescent-shaped weir, 
constructed, apparently, to secure a supply of 
water to two dusty meal mills and other works. 
For a short distance, both below and above this 
spot, there is very exquisite wood and water 
scenery ; but Kenmuir Bank is the gem of this 
part of the Clyde. It is a narrow steep, rising 
from the river to a height of about 60 or 70 feet, 
and so closely covered with trees that all summer 
there is " a green gloaming in the wood,'' to use 
one of the happy phrases of Hugh Macdonald, 
who knew the place well, loved it much, and has 
honoured it with one of his sketches in his " Ram- 
bles Round Glasgow.'' At the bottom of the 
bank, towards its east end, there is a perennial 
spring of peculiarly pleasant water, called the 
Marriage Well, to which there is the following 
reference, among others, in "A Life Drama/' 

E 2 



52 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Within yon grove of beeches is a well. 

* * *• ■* * 

Memories grow around it thick as flowers. 

* * * * * 

Beside that well I read the mighty Bard, 
Who clad himself with beauty, genius, wealth ; 
Then flung himself on his own passion-pyre 

And was consumed," 

which is an autobiographic fact. Frequently have 
we sat together for hours, one on each side of the 
spring, on long summer evenings, reading aloud 
by turns the English poets. All Byron's minor 
poems and greater part of " Childe Harold," 
several plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Keats, 
and many others did we thus read " covered with 
secrecy and silence there." And 

" Sometimes we sat whole afternoons, and watched 
The sunset build a city frail as dream, 
With bridges, streets of splendour, towers ; and saw 
The fabrics crumble into rosy ruins, 

And then grow grey as heath." 

" Breezes are blowing in old Qiaucer's verse, 
'Twas here we drank them ; here for hours we hung 
O'er the fine pants and trembles of a line. 
Oft, standing on a hill's green head, we ielt 



THE CLYDE. 53 



Breezes of love, and joy, and melody, 

Blow through us, as the winds blow through the sky ;" 

for the best and our favourite place from which to 
watch 

" When the great sunset burned itself away," 

was the top of this bank. The view here is truly 
magnificent, and has been well described by 
■Macdonald in his rambles. Smith was still stand- 
ing in imagination here, and painting from nature 
— recording what he had actually seen when he 
wrote — 

" From yonder trees I've seen the western sky 
All washed with fire, while, in the midst, the sun 
Beat like a pulse, welling at ev"ry beat 
A spreading wave of light/' 

The photograph of that particular sunset still 
hangs fresh in my mind, and I also retain a vivid 
recollection of that which immediately follows the 
above lines — 

c - ' Where yonder church 
Stands up to heaven, as if to intercede 
For sinful hamlets scattered at its feet, 
I saw the dreariest sight," etc. (Life Drama, pp. 51, 52.) 



54 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

In the second volume of " A Summer in Skye," 
Smith has described Kenmuir, and in narrating 
a ramble to it, records an incident that happened 
several years before he had first visited the 
Hebrides. It may not be out of place to repeat 
it here, seeing he has omitted in his report one 
of his own characteristic smart sayings on the 
occasion. We had walked together from the city 
along the river side as far as Dalbeth Burn, near 
Harvey's Dyke, when we beheld a plain but tidily 
dressed old, good-looking, matronly woman, and a 
sprightly boy about twelve years of age, standing 
in embarrassment, because of recent floods having 
carried away the plank which had bridged the still 
swollen streamlet. We assisted them over their 
difficulty, and having received may thanks, pushed 
on towards Carmyle and Kenmuir, leaving them 
behind. At length, having spent some time in the 
wood, we again reached the village on our return. 
" But what is to do ? The children are gathered in 
a circle, and the wives are standing at the open 
doors. There is a performance going on. The 



THE CLYDE. 55 



tambourine is sounding, and a tiny acrobat, with a 
fillet round his brow, tights covered with tinsel 
lozenges, and flesh coloured shoes, is striding 
about on a pair of stilts, to the no small amuse- 
ment and delight of the juveniles. He turns his 
head," and I had no sooner said — " Tis the boy of 
Dalbeth Burn," than Smith, laying one hand on 
my shoulder, and pointing with the other to the 
sylph-like form poised in the air, whispered in 
my ear, " Be not forgetful to entertain strangers ; 
for some" — laying emphasis on the last word — 
"have entertained angels unawares."* But we are 
recognised : the boy smiles and honours us with a 
graceful salute ; — the old lady, too, gives the 
tambourine a few special beats, and drops us one 
of her best curtsies, and, as w r e have become " the 
observed of all observers," we make a hasty 
retreat. 

* Smith was often very happy at a bon mot of this kind. On 
another occasion, for example, when we were passing through the 
village of Camlachie, a group of women and boys were assembled 
round a milk cart, the owner of which was engaged in an angry 



56 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

But Smith was certainly not gifted with 
prophetic vision when he wrote in his second 
volume of " A Summer in Skye," regarding 
Carmyle — "an old, quiet, sleepy place, where 
nothing has happened for the last fifty years, and 
where nothing will happen for fifty years to come." 
And I suspect he had not visited the village for 
several years, or he would not have written further — 
" For half a century not one stone has been placed 
upon another here;" for, on revisiting Carmyle a 

altercation with a ragged little urchin ; and having a large measure 
full of buttermilk in his hand, he dashed the whole contents 
in his rage on the boy's face — " Eh, that's a sour doiik" said 
Smith. And again, during one of the brief visits he paid to 
Glasgow, after he was located in Edinburgh, being accosted on the 
street by a member of the Addisonian Society with a — "Well, 
have you come back for a change of air ? " " No, I have only come 
for a change of smoke," was his quick reply. At another time, a 
member of the same club, being engaged during one of its sittings, 
on the opposite side of a debate from him, finished a long argument 
rather inelegantly, by saying "that is the right stuff; " "and it is 
stuff" retorted Smith, without rising from his seat. Such ejacu- 
lations of spontaneous wit were frequent with him in the club. 
Indeed, it was generally thus that he answered his opponents, for 
he never excelled in argumentation. 



THE CLYDE. 57 



few months after his death, I found several new 

houses had been added to the village since he and 

I used to pass through it, while some old ones 

had undergone considerable alteration, in order to 

render them more conformable to modern taste. 

A railway, too, had been carried through the 

district, and a station built at only a short distance 

from this loveliest and loneliest village of the 

Clyde. It therefore requires no seer's gift to 

foretell that, long before the fifty years during 

which nothing is to happen here, the Carmyle of 

to-day shall have altogether passed away. The 

change has already begun ; and I confess that, 

while I found a considerable advantage in being- 

conveyed in a few minutes by rail to Carmyle on 

this occasion, it pained me to behold the station, 

and especially to witness the alterations made and 

making in the old-fashioned village. There was 

one house, however, on which happily time had 

wrought no change, and which I passed with very 

peculiar feelings. This was the very humble but 

always clean refreshment house, where Smith and 



58 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

I were wont to partake of bread and cheese and 
porter, on our way home from Kenmuir. I felt 
strongly inclined to enter, and sit alone for a 
while in its large sombre room with white sanded 
floor, that I might meditate on the past, and try 
to realize in imagination 

" The touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still." 

But time and other considerations forbade the 
gratification of this melancholy longing on the 
present occasion ; so I passed on through the 
village to the Clyde, and turned towards Kenmuir. 
It was nearly fifteen years since I had been here 
before along with Mr. Smith. Indeed, often as I 
had once frequented the place, I had seldom been 
there but in his company, and all my associations 
of it were consequently connected with him. 
Therefore, as I at length entered the wooded bank, 
and began to thread the winding footpath, there 
came upon my spirit one of the strangest and 
most powerful experiences of my life. All in this 



THE CLYDE. 59 



once so familiar scene was so much the same as of 
old. The trees had grown no greater ; there they 
stood, at angles of the path, with their unchanged 
features. Xo additional shrub, even, seemed to 
be added to the tangle. The very blades of grass 
seemed just the same blades. The old flowers 
had not died — there they were in their wonted 
spots. All was so startlingly familiar that I felt 
as if I had renewed my youth ; the past was 
restored ; the intervening years became a vanished 
dream. At one moment I could not resist obey- 
ing an impulse to turn round and make sure that 
Smith was not behind me. Had I then seen his 
form, I do not think it would have surprised 
me much ; nor had I heard him pronounce my 
name, would it have startled me. My imagination 
was in that state of heat and tension in which 
apparitions may be begotten. My progress 
through the wood gave me a fuller understanding 
than I had previously — a kind of realization, 
indeed— of "the valley of the shadow of death." 
I felt as if accompanied through "all the lonely 



60 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

greenery of the place " by the spirit of my 
departed friend. Yet there was no fearfulness 
upon my heart. I was filled with solemn enjoy- 
ment. It was a powerful experience, which I had 
in no measure anticipated. It came upon me 
suddenly by the singularly-familiar look of all 
surrounding objects linking me anew to the past ; 
and I do not believe it could be repeated again 
to the same degree of intensity by another visit 
to the same scene. The feeling subsided, not 
as it came, but gradually, as I approached the 
end of the bank. I then sat down by the side 
of the well, and tried to recall the sweetly-solemn 
impression, by summoning my imagination to seat 
the loved form as of old on the opposite side of 
the well, but in vain. I then retraced the path 
for a short distance, and perceived that several 
trees had their barks sculptured with the initial 
letters of names far more thickly than they used 
to be. This was a clear indication that Smith's 
poems and Macdonald's book of " Rambles," had 
given a notoriety to the place which it did not 



THE CLYDE. 61 



formerly possess. And this surmise was speedily 
confirmed by entering into conversation with the 
tenant of the land, whom I found sitting under 
a tree at the top of the bank, as I left the wood. 
On remarking that it used to be a very lonely 
spot, for on often visiting it in years past I 
scarcely ever met any person in it ; " Oh," said 
he, "it is not so now, for within the last few 
years it has many visitors, and especially on the 
Sabbaths, when it has far too many." On being 
further asked if he knew of any cause of this 
increase of visitors, he said " No," and appeared 
to be ignorant of Smith and Macdonald having 
celebrated his farm in their writings, I had 
observed, also, before leaving the wood, that its 
former, and natural silence, was ever and anon 
disturbed by the puff and whistle of railway 
engines, so that the following sentence by Smith 
— "The shallow wash and murmur of the Clyde 
flows through a silence as deep as that of an 
American wilderness," is alreadv out of date. 
Sic tempora mutaniur ! 



62 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

By starting from Queen Street at 4 o'clock p.m., 
our Saturday afternoon's excursions were occasion- 
ally extended farther than Kenmuir. One place 
in particular, thus visited once or twice each 
summer, was Bothwell Priory. In going thither 
we sometimes walked by the northern bank of 
the Clyde, as far as the bridge which spans the 
river a mile or so below that hoary ruin, and then 
pursued the rest of the way along the south bank. 
This necessitated our fording the Calder, which 
we did by one wading and carrying the other 
on his back. But as this route involved other 
disadvantages, among which were the ordinary 
risks of trespassers, we more irequently, with regret 
at being separated from the much-loved Clyde, 
went by the London road, and returned by 
Cambuslung and Rutherglen. An occasional 
summer holiday was sometimes also spent at the 
Priory in reading the poets ; and I have a very 
specially endeared remembrance of us passing 
one such day in autumn, while the reapers were 
busy in the golden grain, in Campsie's most 



THE CLYDE. 63 



romantic glen. There we lay for hours, under 
the cloudless sky, upon a jutting bossy rock below 
one of the falls, during which time Smith read the 
whole of Thomson's " Castle of Indolence," and 
never was poem read in more auspicious scene 
and circumstance, or more appreciated. 



CHAPTER IV. 

" This rambling strain 
Recalls our summer walks again ; 
When doing nought — and to speak true, 
Not anxious to find aught to do, — 
The wild unbounded hills we ranged, 
While oft our talk its topic changed ; 
And desultory as our way, 
Ranged, unconfined, from grave to gay." 



Scott. 



A S Smith was allowed a week of holidays 

each summer, we began in 1848 spending 

it together in excursions to the Highlands. Our 

first trip was to the island of Arran. We set 

out on a Monday morning in July. 

" The morn rose blue and glorious o'er the world ; 
The steamer left the black and oozy wharves, 
And floated down between dark ranks of masts. 



THE HIGHLANDS. 65 

And at length in Brodick Bay, 

" We reached the pier, 
Whence girls in fluttering dresses, shady hats, 
Smiled rosy welcome " — 

not to us, however. We were strangers to all. 
Our means did not permit us putting up at the 
fashionable hotel. But this was no hardship ; 
for the gay company and bustle of the place 
would not have been at all congenial to our 
young and rather solitary spirits ; so we sought 
for a private lodging, and with considerable 
difficulty — for the little town was overcrowded 
with tourists and summer visitors — found a house 
where one bedroom might be had ; and as this 
entirely suited both our purse and our inclination, 
we took it for a week. On the following morn- 
ing we walked along the shore to Glen Sannox, 
where we spent the whole long summer day, by 
turns walking, climbing, and lying on the heather ; 
conversing much on many topics, and. particularly 
on the superstitions of the Highlanders and 

F 



66 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

islanders of Scotland, as Smith has indicated in 
the following lines : — 

* ' The beauty of the morning drew me on 
Into a gloomy glen. The heavy mists 
Crept up the mountain-sides. I heard the streams ; 
The place was saddened with the bleat of sheep. 
'Tis surely in such lonely scenes as these 
Mythologies are bred. The rolling storms — 
The mountains standing black in mist and rain, 
With long white lines of torrents down their sides — 
The ominous thunder creeping up the sky — 
The homeless voices at the dead of night 
Wandering among the glens — the ghost -like clouds 
Stealing beneath the moon, — are but as stuff 
Whence the awe-stricken herdsman could create 
Gods for his worship." 

Other glens were also visited, and the hills were 
climbed, but we were prevented reaching the 
top of Goatfell by the gathering of a thunder 
storm. On the whole, however, the weather 
was fine during our holidays, and we had a 
season of intense enjoyment. It was the first 
trip we had taken together, and so highly were 
we delighted with it, that it was resolved, as we 
lay one day in Glen Sannox, that, if spared till 



THE HIGHLANDS. 67 

next summer, we would take a pedestrian tour 
together through some part of the Highlands — 
Smith insisting, as a special part of the agree- 
ment, that no third person should be of the 
party. By this time we had come to understand 
each other, and both of us found our rambles 
most agreeable and profitable when no other 
friend was present. Indeed, it was a peculiar 
characteristic of Smith that, while he could be 
social and enjoy select society, he found far 
most delight himself! and his conversation was 
most rich and captivating when with only one 
genial friend. To know him, you required to 
have him for a while by himself. And if you 
were happy enough to secure this occasionally, 
you could not but love him for the rest of your 
life in a more than ordinary degree. This cha- 
racteristic he retained until his death. 

In accordance with the above agreement, in 
July of the following year (1849), 

"Like clouds or streams we wandered on at will 
Three glorious days." 

F 2 



6S ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Travelling first by train to Stirling — accompa- 
nied by a friend and his betrothed — we spent 
several hours visiting the Castlehill and the 
other places of historic and natural interest 
about the town, and paid a hasty visit to the 
field of Bannockburn ; then, knapsack on back, 
and stick in hand, we turned our faces towards 
Benledi, under whose shade we had resolved to 
sleep that night, and began our journey on foot 
to Callander. Our friends accompanied us as 
far as Bridge of Allan — at that time a small 
and humble village, lovely indeed, but very un- 
like the present gay resort of invalids. At length 
we reached Doune, where "A Duke of Albany 
lost his head in view of the Castle : a blind 
trout lives in its well, and visitors feel more in- 
terested in the trout than in the duke." So we, 
like other visitors, bent down over the well, and 
being favoured with the sight of "a shadow on 
the sandy bottom, and the twinkle of a fin," 
pursued our journey, and finally reached Callan- 
der, as Smith has related thus, — " It was sunset 



THE HIGHLANDS. 69 

as I approached . it first — years ago. Beautiful 
the long crooked street of white-washed houses, 
dressed in rosy colours. Prettily dressed chil- 
dren were walking or running about. The empty 
coach was standing at the door of the hotel, 
and the smoking horses were being led up 
and down. And right in front stood King 
Benledi clothed in imperial purple, the spokes 
of splendour from the sinking sun raying far 
into heaven from behind his mighty shoulders." 
Here we spent the following day — Sunday. In 
the forenoon we attended Divine service in the 
Free Church, where a peculiar incident occurred. 
Before leaving our hotel, Smith engaged to put a 
New Testament in his pocket to serve us both in 
church. And having his attention fixed on some 
object, thought, or person, as the minister at 
length announced the first psalm, he put his hand 
in his pocket and handed me the book, to look 
up the place. But on opening the small volume, 
instead of a New Testament with the psalms of 
David, in metre, appended, I found it to be a copy 



70 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

of " Don Juan," and immediately handed it back 
to him open at the title-page. Having glanced 
at it and seen his mistake, our eyes met, and the 
grotesque idea of the " Don " in church, destroyed 
for a space, I fear, becoming solemnity in both 
our minds. 

In the afternoon we walked up the pass of 
Leney to Loch Lubnaig, feeling on our spirits the 
spell of Scott's muse ; for we were now in the 
scene of " The Lady of the Lake." 

" Benledi saw the cross of fire" 

carried through this pass by young Angus of 
Duncraggan, and delivered into the hands of 
young Norman of Armandave, as the latter came 
forth from the chapel of St. Bride leading the 
fair Mary of Tombea from the altar, where she 
had pledged to him her troth. 

But even Scott was destined to be soon forgot, 
while thoughts and feelings more in harmony with 
the sacred day were awakened within us, as before 
we reached Lubnaig, "the lake of the rueful 



THE HIGHLANDS. 71 

countenance," we came suddenly upon a place 
unnoticed in guide-books, which made a deep 
impression upon our spirits — the most sombre 
and solitary of burial grounds — a true " God's 
acre " among the mountains, with no abode of 
living man in sight. Smith has several times 
alluded to this spot in his works. In the second 
volume of " A Summer in Skye," he writes of it 
thus, — " Beside the road is an old churchyard, 
for which no one seems to care — the tombstones 
being submerged in a sea of rank grass.'' In 
" A Life Drama," he describes it as — ■ 

"The still, old graveyard 'mong the dreary hills ;" 

and in " A Boy's Poem," as— 

" A churchyard covered with forgetful grass." 

But the passage in which he has specially referred 
to it occurs in that exquisite little poem, which 
he incorporated in "A Life Drama," but as 
originally composed, was entitled "The Garden 
and the Child," and regarding which the Rev. 



72 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

George Gilfillan wrote, on reading it in MS., — 
" Which must be published. It reminds us of the 
style of Wordsworth's finer ballads, and has made 
us both weep and thrill." In his " Gallery of 
Literary Portraits/' too, he has said of it, — " Which 
alike we and the author consider the best strain 
in the whole ( Life Drama.' It was the perusal of 
it which first increased to certainty our previous 
notion that Mr. Smith was one of our truest poets." 
The following lines contain the record of our 
visit to this " still, old graveyard " : — 

' ' By the shores of Loch Lubnaig, 
A dear friend and I were walking 
('Twas the Sabbath,) we were talking 
Of dreams and feelings vague ; 
We paused by a place of graves, 
Scarcely a word was 'twixt us given, 
Silent the earth, silent the heaven, 
No murmur of the waves, 
The awed loch lay black and still 
In the black shadow of the hill. 
We loosed the gate and entered in," etc. 

This, in truth, we did both on going and return- 
ing, and spent some time among the graves. But, 



THE HIGHLANDS. 73 

of course, the eclipse of the sun, described as 
witnessed there, was not seen corporis oculis, but 
only by the poet's "vision and faculty divine." 

I retain in my possession a letter from Smith 
of this year, which contains this charming lyric 
as originally written. The letter begins thus — 

Friday Night. 

My dear T , 

I hereby send you a 
poem, a phantom of heart and brain, composed 
very rapidly, in a most diabolical mood, when I 
might have said, regarding my inner man, 

" Hell is empty, 

And all the devils are here." 

. . . It is not very long. The rhymes may be ' 
bad, but ... it was writ in two hours. 

A. Smith. 

This is interesting, as showing the rapidity with 
which he could write such verses at the early 
age of nineteen. But the poem was thus quickly 
composed, because it was written under a true 



74 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

and powerful inspiration, which came upon him 
under the following circumstances : — It happened, 
on the day of its composition, that he was, as 
described in the above letter, in one of those 
melancholy moods to which he was often subject 
in those days, without any very definite cause, 
and, in returning from dinner along the Trongate 
to his work, he came upon a bright, rosy, laughing 
little girl, " beautiful as heaven," and the sight of 
her sweet, happy innocence thrilled his heart, 
fired his imagination, and awoke all the music of 
his soul. All the afternoon he was silent at his desk. 
The child was still before him ; his imagination 
brooded over her beauty in musing reverie, and 
more and more his soul glowed before the breath 
of inspiration, till eight o'clock, when he went 
straight and in silence from the warehouse to 
his room in Charlotte Street, and, lifting his pen, 
allowed his heated, pent up thoughts to rush 
into the mould of poetry. In comparing my copy 
as thus written that night with the piece as it 
now occurs in " A Life Drama," I find a number 



THE HIGHLANDS. 75 

of verbal emendations, most of which, though, 

as I think, not all, are improvements. In one 

place, also, three verses have been expunged, and 

others inserted in their stead, while three new 

verses have been added. But — I know not well 

how to account for it, — I am never so affected 

when I read this piece as part of " A Life Drama," 

as when I read it in accordance with its original 

composition, as an isolated lyric. It seems to 

have suffered, as I regard several of the author's 

other early poems did, even to a greater extent, 

by unnatural incorporation in, and unfavourable 

juxtaposition with, other portions of the " Life 

Drama." When I read this piece as published, 

I confess that Mr. Gilfillan's eulogium of it seems 

excessive, but it never does so when I read it as 

he did, when he commended it — as an isolated 

and independent poem. Every time I peruse 

my copy in the letter before me, I am affected 

with deep and varied emotions ; and often very 

much regret that Mr. Smith was not content to 

appear, at the beginning, before the world simply 



76 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

as a lyrist. Had he done so, I believe he would 
to-day have occupied a unique and unrivalled 
position in the kingdom of poets. 

But to return to our narrative. After a hasty 
visit to the Bridge of Bracklin, we were, on the 
following morning, on our way to the Trossachs 
by an early hour, — for we had a long day's 
journey in prospect. 

The morning was of doubtful promise. Huge 
masses of clouds hurried after each other across 
the sky, and we were consequently apprehensive 
of rain. Under this feeling we had not proceeded 
far till we came upon an aged Highlander work- 
ing upon the road, from whom we were favoured 
with the only attempt I have heard a Highland 
peasant, in his native wilds, make at wit. After 
addressing him with the usual good morning^ 
one of us asked, — " Do you think we shall have 
rain ? " " I ha'e nae doubt o't," was his reply, 
which having caused us — with our townsmen's 
ideas of a mountaineer's powers of prognosticating 
by the signs of the sky — to hesitate whether we 



THE HIGHLANDS. 77 

should retrace our steps or hasten our speed 
onwards, we ventured the further inquiry — " Do 
you think it will be soon ?" when he responded, 
"Ah, I canna jist say, but I'm sure it '11 rain 
sometime ; an' a bad business it would be if it 
did na." Whether the Scottish Highlanders are 
endowed with wit or not I know not ; but if they 
are, they do not exercise the faculty much be- 
fore strangers. Wit is generally allied with 
sprightliness and volubility, but the Highlander 
at home is taciturn and morose. But amused 
rather at Donald's effort than his success, we 
pushed on, and soon under the double spell of 
Scott and nature — romance and reality, 

" We walked 'mid unaccustomed sights and sounds; 
Fair apparitions of the elements 
That lived a moment on the air, then passed 
To the eternal world of memory :" 

for the spirit of the prince of novelists seemed to 
haunt the scene opening every moment in fuller 
beauty before us. The rolling clouds casting 
alternate shade and sunshine on the gorgeous 



78 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

landscape, only varied and enhanced its effects 
upon our minds. It would be impossible to de- 
scribe our emotions. They were varied ; some- 
times awing, but more generally jubilant. At 
one moment, in what is properly the Trossach's 
pass, our spirits sought vent in shouting lustily, 
and so woke to our surprise the reverberating 
echoes of the hills ; and as peak after peak thus 
unexpectedly answered to our voices, our hearts 
were filled with a new joy. Never before nor 
after did I see Smith so excited. It is not to 
be wondered, therefore, that he has marked the 
spot, in his works, thus — " Echo sits babbling 
beneath the rock ;" and also recorded the fact 
as follows, in a " A Boy's Poem," — 

We raised a shout, 
A sullen echo — then were heard the sweet 
And skiey tones of spirits 'mid the peaks, 
Faint voice to faint voice shouting ; dim halloos 
From unseen cliff and ledge ; and answers came 
From some remoter region far withdrawn 
Within the pale blue sky." 

But at length, in all its loveliness, Loch Katrine 



THE HIGHLANDS. 79 

burst upon our view, and we sat down by its brink 
and gazed a while on Helen's Isle. No boat nor 
form of any kind was visible upon its waters, 
and no voice, no sound was heard. The July 
sun shining unclouded now in its full strength, 
caused even the birds of song to seek the covert 
of the woods, and hushed the voice of nature, 
w T hile it spread a splendour over all the scene. 
To rest and lie in reverie indeed were sweet, 
but could not be long indulged. Having heroic- 
ally resolved to be true pedestrians, we de- 
termined to have nothing to do with the steamer 
on Loch Katrine, but to walk the whole length 
of the classic lake — round its head, and rest for 
the night at Tarbet on Loch Lomond. And this 
purpose we accomplished. Towards the end of 
our journey, however, the clouds which had been 
gathering for some time began to distil a soaking 
rain, as the following extract from a sonnet re- 
lates : — 

Near our journey's end, 
As down the moorland road we straight did wend, 



8o ALEXANDER SMITH. 

To Wordsworth's Inversneyd, talking to kill 
The cold and cheerless drizzle in the air, 
'Bove me I saw — at pointing of my friend — 
An old fort, like a ghost upon the hill, 
Stare in blank misery through the blinding rain ; 
So human-like it seemed in its despair — 
So stunned with grief — long gazed at it we twain." 

From Inversneyd we were rowed over to Tarbet 
by two greedy Highlanders, who did not fail, from 
our inexperience, to fleece us a little. At Tarbet 
we lodged for the night, and next day proceeded 
to Inverary, by Arrochar, round the head of Loch 
Long and through Glen Croe, in which we ex- 
perienced the drenching powers of a Scotch mist. 
Seated at length on the celebrated "rest and be 
thankful" under the heavy dusk and soaking 
atmosphere, a woman, blind of one eye and bare 
of foot, with a miserable-looking child tied on 
back by an old tartan plaid, came suddenly uj 
us through the mist, and on being asked if it 
always rained up here, replied, " No, it's shist 
this way." The mist at length rolled away as 
we hied onward, and, under a good breeze, our 



THE HIGHLANDS. 81 

clothes dried on us before we reached Loch 
Fyne ; and having been ferried across to Inverary, 
we took steamer the following morning to Glas- 
gow, where we arrived in due time, with scarcely 
a shilling between us ; but, in truth, we had not 
one pound sterling each when we started. 



CHAPTER V. 

i ' A prophecy and intimation, 
A pale and feeble adumbration." 

Longfellow. 

HAD by this time become aware of Smith's 
devotion to poetry. Indeed, there were few 
secrets between us now. A friendship more close 
and sincere could scarcely exist between two 
persons. He was silent, however, for a consider- 
able time after I became acquainted with him, 
regarding his writing poetry. At first he re- 
peated a few lines occasionally in our evening 
rambles. At length it became a practice, when 
three or more of the select of the Addisonian 
club met together for a stroll by Clyde side, 
for each to repeat from memory the finest pas- 
sages of the poets, on some particular subject, 



REVELATIONS. 83 

that he recollected. And, on these occasions, 
Smith sometimes quietly introduced a few lines 
of his own, in order to see how they were ap- 
preciated — concealing, of course, the authorship. 
And as I had generally heard them before, I pre- 
served a friendly reticence. On being requested 
to name the author, an evasive answer was given. 
Sometimes, too, he indulged in a little mischiev- 
ous humour by extemporising a stanza of no 
great merit, in order to try his critics. One night, 
for example, each was repeating passages on Love, 
and Smith, after having quoted numerous fine 
passages, pretending to have forgotten the author- 
ship, repeated the following lines, which were ex- 
temporised by himself :— 

" 'Tis sad to sleep 'neatli the cold black loam/ 
'Tis sad from this world to part ; 
But sadder far 'tis to have no home, 
No home in a human heart." 

And he was much amused by the most sober 
minded of the company expressing unbounded 
admiration, and demanding their repetition that 

G 2 



84 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

they might be imprinted indelibly on his memory. 
And, indeed, the praise then bestowed thus upon 
them seems for a while to have caused Smith to 
regard them favourably himself; for I find them 
in his own handwriting in a serious poem I have 
by me, which was cut down, and in great part 
used up again piecemeal, in the compilation of 
"A Life Drama.'' 

I had no idea, however, of how much he had 
written till the following incident occurred : — Not 
finding him as usual at our meeting-place one 
evening, and learning from one of his fellow- 
workers that he had not been in the warehouse 
that day, I suspected that he might be unwell, as 
he had complained the previous night of a slight 
cold ; and on the following morning I had a note 
from him stating that such was the case, and re- 
questing me as he had no intention of leaving 
home that day either, to visit him in the evening. 
I consequently did call upon him in the evening, 
when I found him seated alone in his snug little 
room before the fire. We had a long talk to- 



REVELATIONS. 85 

gether. He seemed all the while, however, in an 
abstracted mood. I suspected there was some- 
thing on his mind which he desired to communi- 
cate, and endeavoured in various ways to lead 
him into freer conversation. But all being in 
vain, I at length rose to leave, when he suddenly 
also rose to his feet, saying, " Sit down a little : 
I have something that I wish to show you." He 
then went to a drawer and took out a mass of 
manuscript, and, sitting down again, began to 
read from it with a rather tremulous voice. I 
was soon captivated and astonished. When he 
was done reading, we sat for some moments in 
silence ; for I was as one bewildered with surprise. 
Had I spoken as I then felt, I should have ex- 
pressed myself, perhaps too warmly, only in un- 
measured terms of laudation, and so have chanced 
to offend him ; for he utterly disliked flattery. 
At length, having abruptly said, " I had no idea 
that you had written so much," he replied, " Well, 
but what do you think of it?" " Think of it," I 
answered, " I know not what to think or say of 



86 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

it just now ; but this I will say," rising from emo- 
tion and taking his hand, " go on and do take 
care of these manuscripts ; for I believe the 
world will love to read them, and may ask for 
them soon." And so I turned to leave, while he, 
pressing my hand with much feeling, said, " I 
understand and thank you. Let us say no more 
at present. We shall be able to speak more freely 
of this again." So we parted. But next night we 
met again, and finding that we could speak more 
freely then, had a long and interesting conversa- 
tion on life's purposes and aims, in connection 
with, and as suggested by, the preceding night's 
revelation. But still feeling that I could better 
express my thoughts to him by writing than 
viva voce, I addressed to him — as we were both 
wont to do on special occasions — a letter, of 
which I kept no copy, and the contents of which 
I cannot now recall. The following answer, 
however, will reveal so far its nature, and, 
what is of more importance, also account for a 
fact in his life to which reference has already 



REVELATIONS. 87 



been made, both in these pages and by other 
writers. 

" Monday Evening. 
u Dear Tom, 

" As we talked this night last week, few 

stars were visible in my spirit sky ; those visible 

looked dreary and cold. One has gone out since. 

Let it go. A star, 'my life's star,' burnetii, and 

will burn : when it sets, I set. 

"Your letter, I need not say, was read with 
interest. You have my sincere thanks. You 
have been very frank with me of late ; I will 
return you like for like. I will unclasp my soul 
to you, and you may read what I had hoped one 
day to have avowed proudly ; or, that hope 
failing, to have buried it for ever — a dead hope in 
a dead heart. 

" You may recollect, on the evening which has 
given rise to this epistle, you made a guess as to 
what mine aspirations tended — you guessed poetry. 
I made some evasive answer. I could not then 
say 'Ay.' I can now say you guessed aright. 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



It has been the seventh heaven of my aspirations 
for years ; a passion running as deep as the 
aboriginal waters of my being. At the present 
moment the ' passion poesy ' standeth on the necks 
of all the others like a king, and it will ultimately 
swallow them as the serpent of Moses swallowed 
the serpents of the Egyptian magicians. It is 
with a feeling of humiliation I make this con- 
fession. I know not how you will receive it, I 
trust, however, you will do me justice in your 
thoughts ; that you will not place me in the 

category with the D s, K s, J s. I 

believe my spirit is something different from theirs 
— deeper and sincerer. I am unconscious of that 
pitiful vanity (the Alpha and Omega of their 
hopes) to see one's name in print ; the immortality 
of five minutes in the ' poet's corner/ Above all, 
don't laugh or sneer, however much you may pity. 
I could bear sneers on this point from no one, 
least of all from you. I might keep silent, but I 
would suffer like a martyr in his shirt of fire. 
Believe me it's no laughing matter. Underneath 



REVELATIONS. 89 



those wide doming heavens, that ancient sun, those 
pitying stars, of all the miseries this is the chiefest 
— when one has the soul, blood, heart, pulses of an 
angel — all but the wings ! This is egotism with a 
vengeance, but we are all egotists ; and all we are, 
feel or see — this universe of souls, stars and suns, is 
but a sublime egotism of Deity. 

" You tell me you wish I should yet fill a pulpit : 
this may never be. I speak in sober sadness 
when I say I am unfit for public life. That fire 
once burnt brightly on the hearthstone of my 
heart — the flame flickered, waned, and died ; a 
mighty wind scattered the red embers like autumn 
leaves : ' the hearthstone is now cold ; I do not 
wish to fill a pulpit. 

"You may be inclined to ask, 'What do you 
intend to do?' I might say, ' Nothing.' To 
attempt to become a preacher is useless : inca- 
pacity within — without difficulties no capacity 
could overcome — prevent it. What I would like 
is just some way of living which would feed and 
cover this carcase, and allow much time to roam 



90 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

through book-world, and the world of my own 
spirit, like the new-born Adam in the new-born 
Eden. You may say this life I desire to lead will 
not be a useful one for my fellows. Granted ! 
I do not intend to gird on an apron and become 
waiter to the world. 

" If you judge me by the length of my letter 
you may think me rather ungrateful. I am at 
the confessional, and, certes, the confession is no 
pleasant task. I do not know, however, that 
anything more need be said. I have unbosomed 
myself as well as I could. I fear this night's work 
will lessen your esteem for me, as I have fallen 
somewhat in my own in the course of it. If it 
so be, I will be the only loser. Jog along, Tom ; 
the road of life is rough, but the eternities are 
ahead. We will reach them soon. 

" Yours truly, 

A. Smith." 

The sentiment with which this letter concludes 
— " the eternities are ahead : we shall reach them 



REVELATIONS. 91 

soon," was from Smith's pen, no merely flippant 
saying. As several persons have already noticed, 
he has in his writings, with singular plainness and 
frequency, expressed forebodings of a premature 
death. The couplet, — 

" Before me runs a road of toil 
With, my grave cut across," 

has since his death been repeatedly quoted in 
instance of this. But his works do not express 
this feeling more frequently than his conversation 
did from the first day that I knew him. The 
general tenor of his youth was by no means 
melancholy ; still, in our private walks and con- 
ferences he was ever and anon uttering this 
gloomy presentiment. But the following poetical 
epistle which he sent me this winter, when our 
regular meetings were again restricted to the 
Saturday afternoon, exhibits it so fully as seems 
to warrant its being published.* 



* In publishing it, however, it is desirable that the reader under- 
stand, that though in my judgment it is a production not unworthy 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



The poet was, in this instance, alas ! a true 
vates — a prophet The epistle is headed — 

" A DREAM. 

'• I had a dream, wrapt in prophetic sleep 
The picture of a lifetime passed before me. 

I saw a youth, 
And he was not a stranger ; for he seemed 
To bear resemblance to myself or you. 
His heart was bared before me, and I saw 
The deepest secrets of his inmost soul, 
His thoughts, his feelings, his emotions — all. 
I started, for methought they were my own, 
And so I loved him — 'twas a fearful love. 

He sought not much companionship, 
And his close intimates had never dreamed 
He was so strange a being. None could guess, 
From what he said or did, the wild idolatry 
Which reigned within. He worshipped intellect 
Most fervently, and his young heart longed 
High to be marshalled 'mongst the mighty dead. 



of Smith's early muse, it is not given here as a specimen of his 
poetic talent. It would be altogether improper to print it as such, 
seeing it was evidently written off rapidly at one sitting, and was 
never designed by him for the press. It would never, therefore, 
have been put in type by me had it not, apart entirely from its not 
inconsiderable poetic value, been specially interesting as a prophecy 
now singularly and sadly fulfilled. 



REVELATIONS. 



93 



He was a lonely being, a dreamer strange, 

He mingled with the whirl of human life — 

A mingler masked. He was not what he seemed ; 

(But, ah ! he was tmmasked, and his pale brow 

Dewy with death- sweat gleams upon me now) 

He had no sympathy with the rude world : 

His world was in himself ; and with his dreams — 

Most gorgeous dreams — he sported years away. 

He loved not company, 
Nor was he solitary, for nature spake 
Most musically to his listening ear— 
The lull of waters and the sighing breeze. 
At eventide — the holy twilight stealing on, 
The flowers, the waving grass, the sunset sky, 
Streaked with rich purple — all these had a voice. 
And when the glorious night o'erspread the world 
With her dark wings, distilling pearly dew 
Upon the thirsty flowers, how passing sweet 
Were then his wanderings no man can tell ; 
For star-born melody came floating by ; 
His tranced ear drank music spiritually wild. 
Night was holy — the full-orbed moon 
Rolled on her bright path through the deep blue sky. 
Bathing the landscape in her silvery light ; 
And one thin fleecy cloud which onward sailed, 
Tinged by her rays, seemed like a spirit's home. 
And the wild gleaming stars which lit the vault 
Of heaven— the myriad toned voice of night, 
Roused up a tide of passion in his soul 
Which may be felt — which words can never tell. 



94 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

When stirred by more than mortal sympathies, 

When his own heart-strings thrilled to nature's melody, 

When poetry rolled o'er him like a flood, 

Had he met then an every-day companion, 

All, all was stilled, and for a time he seemed 

To be a soulless mass like those around him. 
****** 

This vision vanished, and another came. 

Years had rolled on, and he was now a man. 

His dark hair clustered on his death-like brow, 

Startlingly pale, and his deep sunk eye, 

Alas ! 'twas sadly changed since days of yore ! 

Seldom he smiled ! but oh ! that ghastly smile 

Illumed the brow of agony ! Where now 

( Were all his pantings after future fame — 

His dreams of boyhood — were they realized ? 

Yes he won a name, but — lost himself, 

For death's barbed arrow quivered in his heart. 

Soon he would be numbered with the mighty dead ; 

Soon he would be voiceless — yet the echo 

Of his voice would speak for evermore. 

His fame now seemed 

To his fast flitting soul an empty dream ; 

Undying laurels on a fleshless brow ; 

A golden halo o'er a grinning skull. 

I sadly gazed upon that half-known face, 

And felt as if my doom were shadowed there. 
****** 

'Tis the stilly hush of midnight, 

The sighing wind is mute, and not a sound 



REVELATIONS, 95 

Floats on the air. How glorious this scene ! 
All things imbued with the moon's cold beam, 
Silvery and pure ! The starry-fretted vault 
Of midnight heaven, with its rich pageantry, 
Is scarce more lovely than the sleeping earth. 
The nodding woods flash back the moonbeams pale, 
And these quiet, moveless waters, at this hour 
Appear like sheeted silver. 

I stood beside a grave : 
It was his grave ; and there I stood, as if 
Some fearful secret was to be revealed. 
His tomb was far remote from cities' hum ; — ■ 
He never loved their bustle, and his grave 
Was midst that nature which he loved so well. 
The grass was spangled with the glittering dew, 
And the sweet-scented violets had a tear 
Gleaming upon their face. The modest daisy, 
And all the flowers which bloomed around his grave. 
Were clad in grief — all wet with nature's tears. 
I thought upon the mouldering dead, and wept. 
His life was brief, yet glorious ; and now 
All that remained was lying 'neath my feet. 
I looked upon the gravestone, and on it 
Was carved — ' Here lies an Addisonian.' 
My life-blood curdled, and my trembling limbs 
Could not support me. I fell — and woke, 
The chilly sweat standing on my fevered brow. 
O God, is this the shadow of my destiny ! " 

A. Smith. 



96 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

But not one line of Mr. Smith's had as yet 
appeared in print. He was in no such haste as 
juvenile poets generally are to rush into type. He 
had for several years written such poetry as few 
could write, before any, except his nearest relatives 
and one or two of his most intimate and confi- 
dential friends, knew that he had composed one 
stanza. This was, perhaps, the result unitedly of 
ambition and diffidence. He was ambitious of 
his productions having more than an ephemeral 
existence in some newspaper or magazine, and at 
the same time sensitively afraid of their being 
either rejected or regarded as merely mediocre. 
So 

" Studious of song 
And yet ambitious not to sing in vain," 

he wrote on, re-wrote often, and long reserved. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Ok Htgfrlatftg, %obt, antr gdgriratton& 

" We marked each memorable scene, 
And held poetic talk between ; 
Nor hill nor brook we paced along 
But had its legend or its song." 
■*•***■* 

" Since oft thy praise 

Hath given fresh vigour to my lays ; 

Since oft thy judgment could refine 

My flattened thought, or cumbrous line, 

Still kind, as is thy wont, attend." 

Scott. 

T N the month of July of next year, after spend- 
ing a day or two as guests of a mutual friend 
at Strone, we started on the second of our 
pedestrian tours through the Highlands. Our 
brief sojourn at Strone was a pleasant and 
profitable one. Holy Loch became much en- 
deared to us by its surpassing loveliness, and, 
consequently, was several times visited in after 

H 



98 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

years. Comparing it with the other Scottish 
lochs, Smith says, " Smallest and loveliest of 
them all." It is a famous haunt of landscape 
painters, and on this occasion we met on its shore 
John Cairns, a painter of no little merit, between 
whose death and that of Smith only a few months 
elapsed. I had the pleasure of introducing them 
at this time to each other. On the afternoon of 
our arrival at Strone, we took a walk together to 
the village of Kilmun, and on returning rested for 
some time on the green sward, under the shade of 
some noble trees near the coast road. Each 
seemed to be a great bee-hive. The murmuring 
hum of the insects, blending with the murmuring 
surge of the adjacent waters, was to us a new and 
exquisite sensation, and we lay long enjoying 
it. The impression was not lost on Smith. His 
readers may remember the following allusion 
among others : — 

"I lay beneath a glimmering sycamore, 
Drowsy with murmuring bees." 

It was also while lying, on the following day, on 



HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 99 

the beach, a little farther down the loch, and 
watching the flow and reflux of the tidal waves, 
that the following original, much and justly 
admired figure was begotten in the poet's mind. 
After a few moments of silent, thoughtful gazing, 
he quietly stretched out his hand, a sweet smile 
lighting up his countenance, and said, almost in 
these very words, — 

" See, the bridegroom sea. 
Is toying with the shore, his wedded bride ; 
And in the fulness of his marriage joy, 
He decorates her tawny brow with shells ; — 
Retires a space, to see how fair she looks, 
Then proud runs up to kiss her." 

This became a favourite image with him. It is 
repeated in various forms, less fully drawn out, 
four times at least in " A Life Drama" alone. It 
was thus spontaneously, while looking upon some 
object, that almost all his finest metaphors were 
acquired, and not during study at his desk. They 
came, they w r ere not excogitated. All nature was 
to his mind full of symbols, and he was ever wake- 
ful to discern and understand them. It was his 

H 2 



ioo ALEXANDER SMITH. 

u chief joy to draw images from everything." As 
we could both on occasions walk together for miles 
without speaking, his mind at such times was 
always busy ; and when any happy image 
presented itself to his imagination, he very 
generally, if no third person was present, gave 
immediate utterance to it. So frequently did this 
occur, that it constituted one of the richest charms 
of his society, and proved him to be truly a born 
poet, illustrating the lines, — 

" Familiar things enough to you and me 
Take a strange glory from the poet's mind.' , 

When such ideas dawned upon the horizon of 
his mind, there were no manifestations of ecstacy 
or rapture made by him. There might, indeed, 
be seen a momentary sparkle in his eye, or glow 
upon his countenance, but there was no "fine 
frenzy rolling," and no airs, — all was quiet and 
natural. Nor did I ever see him on such occasions 
use any note-book. His memory was so tenacious 
that he fixed there his most transitory thoughts 



HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 101 

" in a sure place," to work out and polish at his 
leisure ; and I never heard him regret that he had 
forgotten any idea that had once been present to 
his mind. He regarded it, as one of the first laws 
of friendship, that any spontaneous thought which 
he thus expressed should not be repeated to 
others. The violation of this law gave him great 
offence, and he who rendered himself once guilty 
was not likely to be favoured with another oppor- 
tunity of so transgressing. 

From Strone we sailed across to Greenock, and 
went thence by steamer through the Kyles of Bute 
and Crinnan canal to Oban. On the following day 
we visited Dunstaffnage, Connal ferry, the vitrified 
fort of Berigonium ; and the next day sailed to 
Ballahulish at the mouth of Glencoe. 

The coach for Loch Lomond stood in readiness 
for the passengers when we landed, but strapping 
our knapsack on our shoulders we started for the 
Glen on foot, before the coach, with the purpose of 
reaching Tyndrum that night. To see Glencoe 
was our chief object in this trip. Our expectations 



102 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

were great ; but they were more than realized. 
We drank of the grandeur of the scenery till we 
were intoxicated with joy. Our minds became 
oppressed. The heat of the day, too, was intense. 
I shall never forget my emotions when the moor 
of Rannoch at length, " with its grey boulders," 
opened upon our view. We stood still, and " long 
gazed at it we twain." In due time we arrived at 
King's House, with keen appetites for dinner. And 
here we enjoyed an hour's rest. Then staff again in 
hand we resumed our journey. But after we had 
walked about two miles, Smith threw himself down 
on the grass by the road side, and stretched at full 
length we lay rather longer than I thought we 
could afford to do, seeing no house for a night's 
accommodation was to be expected nearer than the 
inn at Tyndrum. Ominous clouds, too, were ga- 
thering onwards, and several distant peals of thun- 
der had been urging us to haste. Sol endeavoured 
to stimulate my friend to arise, but to my surprise, 
for I had never seen him fail in walking before, he 
said he was too wearied, and was resolved to lie 



HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 103 

still where he was, and for once have a good sleep 
on the turf. This, however, I regarded as too 
hazardous to think of, and at length overcame his 
obstinacy by promising to endeavour to secure 
a bed, at least, for the night, in the first house 
we might come to, and so give up the idea 
of reaching Tyndrum till next day. We had to 
walk a few miles, however, before we found any 
house where we could have the accommodation 
required. And even then we had to put up, as a 
great favour, in a very humble and smoky high- 
land hut. Here, however, we got a thoroughly 
clean bed in a very small room, and slept soundly 
till four o'clock next morning. At that hour I hap- 
pened to awaken, and opening my eyes was startled 
at beholding a volume of blue smoke curling down 
through the top of the bed. My first impression 
was one of alarm. But having satisfied myself 
that the smoke was only coming, as a matter of 
course, from the peat fire which was already being 
kindled mid-floor the adjoining kitchen, and hav- 
ing opened the door of our room to allow it to 



104 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

escape, I awoke my friend, and pointing upwards 
to the smoke, he speedily stood upon the floor, 
under the impression that the house was on fire. 
Having dressed, and received some warm milk and 
oatmeal cakes from our kindly old hostess, who 
was already sitting enveloped in peat reek, with a 
black cutty pipe in her mouth, we started for Loch 
Lomond. And, finally, from Tarbet took the 
steamer to Balloch, and proceeding thence by train 
to Bowling, and steamer to Glasgow, completed 
our tour for the year. There is at least one allu- 
sion to the scene of this excursion in the drinking 
song sung by Arthur in " A Life Drama." 

" I've drank in Red Rannoch amidst its grey boulders, 
Where fain to be kisst 
Through his thin scarf of mist, 
Ben More to the sun heaves his wet shining shoulders." 

It was in listening to the most noted elocutionist 
among the Addisonians reciting Motherwell's sword 
chant, that Smith conceived the purpose of writing 
that song in similar measure ; and after composing 
it, having requested his oratorical friend to favour 



HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 105 

him by reciting it, the whole club, and a few 
friends, had the pleasure of hearing it recited at 
the following annual soiree of the society. 

The annual soiree of the Addisonian was quite 
an event to us all in those days. It was an esta- 
blished law of the club that no one should be ad- 
mitted to that festival unless accompanied by a 
lady ; and as Smith and I were very seldom in 
society, and consequently failed to cultivate ac- 
quaintance with the fair sex, this law gave us every 
year a little annoyance. The other members came 
to be aware of our embarrassment connected with 
securing partners, and made it the subject of no 
little mirthful banter. But Smith was sometimes, 
I fear, involved in an unpleasant dilemma from 
compliance w r ith this rule ; as, being wisely resolved 
to remain free of any permanent attachment in his 
present circumstances, but at the same time very 
susceptible to female charms, he found it more 
difficult to disengage himself from, than to procure 
a partner. About this time, however, such a disen- 
gagement was effected in a very melancholy man- 



io6 ALEXANDER SMITH, 

ner. He had for some time been continuing to pay 
attention to a young lady who had been with him 
at our last annual gathering, and if I mistake not, 
had agreed to meet her on a particular evening. 
A dense fog, however, hung over the city all that 
day, and when evening came the young lady failed 
to be at the place of meeting : the thick darkness 
and stifling condition of the atmosphere seemed to 
him a sufficient reason for this. But early on the 
following day the mournful intelligence was brought 
to him that she had been found that morning lying 
dead in the Glasgow and Paisley canal. On the 
afternoon of the previous day, having made a call 
at the southern extremity of the city, she had en- 
deavoured to reach home the nearest way by going, 
as she was accustomed to do often, for a short dis- 
tance by the canal bank — although her friends had 
advised her not to do so on this occasion ; and in 
groping her way by the oft frequented path, she 
must have fallen into the water. 

But Smith has related the incident in the follow- 
ing passage of " A Boy's Poem " : — 



HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 107 

" The fatal sun 

Sucked vapours from the marsh. From morn till eve 

The streets were huddled in a yellow fog, 

Through which the lamps burned beamlessly and dim, 
**■**■* 

She sought relief in friends, and rose at last 

With fond and hurried heart. They went with her. 

1 Don't take the river, cousin, 'tis so dark.' 

1 It is the shortest way — good night, good night. 

They plead, — she broke from them — they called to her. — 

She tossed a laughing answer from the dark. 

The girls returned through thick-mist blinded streets, 

And sat 'mid music in delighted rooms, 

"While she groped, weeping in night's foggy heart. 
* * * * * 

Hour passed on hour, 

And gradually each apprehensive lip 

Grew silent with concern ; then as they sat, 

Like fern leaves troubled by a sudden wind, 

Their hearts were stricken by a speechless fear ; — 

Each read the terror in the other's face. 

They searched with lights — they madly called her name ;— 

Night heard, and, conscience-stricken, held its breath, 

And listened wild. At length, in the bleared morn, 

They saw a something white within the stream, — 

He raised his drowned bride in distracted arms." 

This unfortunate young lady possessed a singu- 
larly gentle disposition, combined with thought- 
fulness of mind. Smith was only acquainted with 



108 ALEXANDER SMITH, 

her for a brief period, and after her melancholy 
death he evidently disliked to hear her spoken of, 
and I never endeavoured to ascertain what im- 
pression she had made upon his heart. He did not 
seem, however, to have entertained any tenderer 
affection than that of friendship, though he cer- 
tainly esteemed her very highly, and his sorrow 
at her lamentable death was sincere and poignant. 
For several days he shunned all society. On the 
night of the day on which he had seen her remains 
interred, we walked together for several miles 
beyond the city, but he was indisposed for con- 
versation, and I allowed him to indulge his sad 
and solemn thoughts in silence. He was of a 
very sensitive and sympathetic nature, and on 
this occasion it was more deeply moved to sadness 
than I had seen it previously. 

As a short time after this sad event we 
walked together by Clydeside, he repeated to me 
from memory the whole of what must be regarded 
one of the finest productions of his genius — the 
verses ending with the refrain " Barbara " (which, 



HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 109 

by the way, was the real Christian name of this 
unfortunate lady), which occur in the poem " Har- 
ton " in the volume of " City Poems." The man is 
not to be envied who can read that pensive lyric, 
and especially its intensely pathetic close, without 
tearful emotion. But the effect produced on the 
mind by reading it, cannot equal that produced by 
hearing it repeated by the poet's own lips, as it 
came fresh from his wounded heart. There never 
were two things more mutually adapted than 
Smith's composition and his voice. No other man 
can read his poetry so well as he did himself. I 
have often been greatly moved by his voice, 
but I never was so overcome by emotion in 
reading or listening to any poetic production as I 
was that night. Some, on finding this gem in 
" City Poems," have instanced it as indicating that 
Smith had made considerable progress as a poet 
from the time that George Gilfillan had, as they 
think too lavishly, praised him, and the "Life 
Drama " was published. But the fact is, whether 
such progress had been made or not, there is no 



1 1 o ALEXANDER SMITH, 

proof of it in this case, as these verses to Barbara, 
whether actually among the pieces shown to Mr. 
Gilfillan or not I cannot tell, were certainly- 
composed and repeated in my hearing before " A 
Life Drama " had been thought of by Mr. Smith. 
It is, indeed, possible that they received some 
polishing from the time they were repeated to 
me till they were published, but that is all. It 
may be worthy of notice here, further, that this 
young lady may be regarded as the second of 
the " fair shapes " of memory celebrated in the 
" Life Drama.'' The following lines clearly refer 
to her : — 

" One comes shining like a saint, 
But her face I cannot paint, 
For mine eyes and blood grow faint. 

" Eyes are dimmed as by a tear, 
Sounds are rushing in mine ear, 
I feel only she is here ; 

" That she laugheth where she stands, 
That she mocketh with her hands. 
I am bound in tighter bands." 

Smith now occupied a place occasionally in the 



HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS, in 

poet's corner of the Glasgow Citizen, the most 
literary weekly newspaper of the West of Scotland, 
under the editorship of James Hedderwick, himself 
no mean poet ; while Hugh Macdonald, one of 
our best minor poets, acted as sub-editor. His 
first appearance in that newspaper was made in 
July 6th, 1850, in lines " To a Friend/' written in 
the Spenserian stanza, and signed Smith Murray. 
But the larger lyrics, several of which had 
already been composed by him, he wisely re- 
served in MS. for further elaboration, revisal, and 
publication in a less ephemeral vehicle. 

For several years previously he had been an 
ardent, though not indiscriminate, admirer of the 
writings of the Rev. George Gilfillan. Everything 
from the pen of that gifted minister of Dundee 
was hailed and diligently perused by him ; and 
on every occasion of his visiting Glasgow as 
a preacher or lecturer, Smith was certain to 
be one of his hearers. No man in Scotland 
wielded at that time so great an influence over 
young aspiring minds intent on self-culture as 



1 1 2 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Mr. Gilfillan ; and among others, Smith was at- 
tracted to him by his hearty, impartial appreciation 
of genius, and the bold utterance of his convic- 
tions. By his writings in " Hogg's Instructor," 
" The Eclectic," " The Critic," etc., Smith's mind 
was in no slight degree stimulated. Several of his 
earliest friends remember him speaking frequently 
of two articles, especially, from Gilfillan's pen, 
which appeared in " Hogg's Instructor," in July, 
1845, on " Genius," as containing sentences which 
greatly quickened his latent faculties, and, to use 
his own words, " haunted my mind for months." 
Hence, at length, emboldened by Mr. Gilfillan's 
commendations of the " Roman," by Sidney 
Yendys or Dobell, Smith, after consultation with 
two of his young friends of the Addisonian 
Society, resolved to submit a selection of his 
poems to him whom he had so long admired, and 
from whose writings he had derived so much benefit. 
Consequently, in April, 185 1, he sent a small parcel 
of MS., accompanied with a modest letter, solicit- 
ing criticism and advice, to Dundee. Mr. Gilfillan 



HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 113 

happened, however, to be then from home ; and on 
his return, finding a great accumulation of MS. 
and correspondence awaiting him, Smith's poems, 
written in an unfamiliar, boyish, unformed, and 
straggling hand, after being hastily glanced at 
were laid aside for fuller inspection at a less busy 
hour, and, being overlaid, were soon forgot. No 
reply to his letter, therefore, came to Glasgow 
during a lapse of several weeks, and, as a natural 
consequence, the young aspirant of the muses felt 
not a little dejected. Still he retained sufficient 
confidence in Mr. Gilfillan's kindliness of nature to 
hope that lack of courtesy was not the cause of 
his disappointment. So, after some delay, he ad- 
dressed another modest letter of inquiry regarding 
the fate of his MS. This brought speedily a reply 
which completely dispelled all his fears and doubts. 
Mr. Gilflllan had meantime perused the poems 
more carefully, and so appreciative, encouraging, 
and eulogistic was his response, that Smith was 
filled w T ith unwonted joy, incited to increase hope- 
fulness, and stirred to greater activity in composi- 

I 



ii4 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

tion. Other poems, at Mr. Gilfillan's desire were 
transmitted for his inspection, and a friendly 
correspondence commenced between the poet and 
the critic. Thus several months glided away. At 
length came July, with its usual week of vacation, 
and again we set out on a pedestrian tour to the 
highlands. 

To this trip we had given much precogitation, 
in choosing our course, fixing its. stages, and 
acquiring all the information we could regarding 
the most important places and objects of interest. 

We first of all sailed by steamer, on Saturday 
afternoon, to the head of Lochgoil, then walked 
through Hell's Glen to Lochfine, and crossed the 
ferry to Inverary, where we remained till Monday 
morning. On Sabbath we attended the parish 
church, and were both highly pleased with the 
preaching of the venerable minister. On the after- 
noon we took a quiet walk to the top of the very 
picturesque hill of Duniquoich, discoursing on 
sundry enigmas of human life. From the hill top 
we had an extensive view of Lochfine and its sur- 



HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 115 

rounding scenery ; but having formed very high 
expectations of the prospect to be enjoyed here, 
we were on the whole rather disappointed. On 
Monday morning we started by five o'clock on the 
road to Oban, by Loch Awe and Ben Cruachan. 
It was a very pleasant morning. The grey mist 
still lay upon the mountains. Nature had not yet 
fully awaked. The solemn stillness of the early 
morn — a stillness broken only by the muffled ripple 
of the water rills, and the occasional plaintive 
bleat of sheep awed our spirits, and we walked 
on in silence through the narrow lonely glen, till 
we were suddenly startled by a voice or sound, 
neither of us had ever heard before — Cuckoo, 
cuckoo ! Instantly we stood, and eye met eye with 
gleam of gladsome surprise, when Cuckoo, cuckoo, 
again broke the stillness, leaving it more deep and 
solemn than before. The joy of our hearts was 
great. Smith has expressed the feeling thus, — 

" Cuckoo, cuckoo, woke somewhere in the light. 
I started at the sound and cried, ' O voice, 
I've heard you often in the poet's page — 
Now in your stony wilds.' " 

I 2 



n6 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Indeed he did utter such a sentiment at the time, 
though not exactly in such measured cadence. 
Our pause, however, was but for a moment. On 
we sped. The mists crept up the mountains' sides, 
and before the rays of the ascending sun soon 
vanished quite away. Our path sloped upwards, 
and at length we came upon the spot called 
\ Burke's view," — a view of mountainous grandeur, 
truly and greatly sublime, over which we hung 
with a long lingering gaze. Loch Awe now lay 
before and beneath us in its exquisitely solemn 
beauty. As we approached it we were much struck 
with its unruffled stillness, lying low amidst the 
mountains, while the peculiar transparency of its 
waters, reflecting with marvellous distinctness the 
mountain's side and overhanging trees, gave us 
intense delight. Very pleasant was now our way 
on to the inn of Cladish, near the head of the 
loch. Here we rested an hour and breakfasted. 
Then strapping on our knapsacks once more, we 
pursued our way round the head of the loch till 
we came upon the foot of Ben Cruachan, towering 



HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AXD ASPIRATIONS. 117 

upwards in massive majesty, and had the ever 
memorable ruin of Kilchurn Castle near, directly 
on our left. Sitting down by the roadside, being 
reluctant to enter the mountain path and leave 
this most lovely scene, — we took out our small 
guide-book, and read anew the story of the castle, 
and long gazing tried to imagine what it was in 
the days of its glory, till our reverie was dispelled 
by the sound of wheels, and looking back upon 
the road we beheld the coach for Oban advancing 
towards us. We then resolved to make up for the 
time we had so pleasantly whiled away here, by 
driving for half a dozen miles upon the coach. 
Fortunately for us, though not for the proprietor, 
there were few passengers, and the driver seemed 
glad of our signal to stop. So, seated near him, we 
bowled along through the wild pass of Brandir, 
with the dark waters of the Awe flowing turbulently 
beneath us on our left ; and entertained by the 
coachman's naive description of places, and narra- 
tion of local incidents, till we reached Loch Etive. 
We then left the coach and resumed our true 



n8 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

character of pedestrians. The day was now well 
spent, and walking by the side of the loch we 
imagined it would be refreshing to have a bath in 
its waters. So in we went. This proved rather a 
serious proceeding, however, as, probably being too 
much fatigued, the cold water had the effect on 
Smith of producing vomiting, and so thoroughly 
prostrating his strength that it was with much 
difficulty we accomplished the remaining ten miles 
or so of our journey to Oban. There he became 
worse, and required to lie in bed till next forenoon 
under medical attendance. It became, consequently, 
necessary also to abandon the prospect of com- 
pleting our projected trip, which was to proceed 
on foot, by the course of the Caledonian canal to 
Inverness. Hence having rested one day in Oban, 
we sailed by steamer to Rothesay, and spent the 
remainder of our vacation time in boating, and 
making short rambles on the island of Bute. In 
a day or two Smith was quite well again, and we 
had a very agreeable time of it on this, " the fairest 
and most melancholy of all the islands of the 



HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIOXS. 119 

Clyde." The epithet " melancholy," which Smith 
has bestowed on Bute, is owing to the presence of 
numerous emaciated invalids, who frequent the 
island during summer on account of its remarkably 
salubrious atmosphere. Our favourite walk while 
here w r as to Ascog Point, where the finest of all 
views upon the island may be had. The prospect 
of the Clyde there is most extensive, varied, and 
very lovely. Every day were we seated for a while 
near the grave of Stanley, first actor, then painter, 
and devout Christian. This is the spot of which 
Smith writes in " A Boy's Poem" — 

"There was a ruined chapel 011 the coast, 
And by it lay a little grassy grave 

Still as a couching lamb. The people told 
How years ago a grey-haired, childless man 
(His name is still remembered by the world), 
Came to these shores, and lay down there to rest 
Till the last trumpet's cry." 

Though this is most certainly the scene referred 
to in these lines, the poet did not intend a precise 
description of it. He has used a poet's licence, 
and given at least one touch of imaginary colouring 



120 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

by the word " ruined " in the first line : for the 
little white chapel, or Free church, by the side of 
which is Stanley's " grassy grave," is by no means 
a ruin. And though there are the dilapidated 
remains of a building at a short distance, it bears 
evidence of having been employed for a very 
different purpose than a chapel. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Z\)t Barfc anfc Ijfe leraltJ* 

" He has lived all his days 
With beauty and with grandeur and with power 
Unrecognised till now." (Smith). 

(i The listening throng 
Applaud the master of the song." Scott. 

QTIMULATED by correspondence with Mr. 
Gilfillan, Smith now devoted his leisure hours 
with increased diligence to poetic composition ; 
and in the month of October appeared the first 
public notice of his poems, in the pages of the 
Eclectic, in an article on " Recent Poets/' from Mr. 
Gilfillan's pen. In the same month, too, that 
reverend critic being in Glasgow, officiating at a 
Communion, met Smith by appointment on the 
" preaching Monday," as it is called. On that day 



122 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

they walked arm in arm along Trongate in friendly 
conversation. They thus met and became person- 
ally acquainted for the first time. Gilfillan had 
brought " The Garden and the Child," " The Page 
and the Lady," and other poems submitted to his 
judgment, along with him ; but offered to show 
them to the late Dr. Nichol, Professor of Astro- 
nomy, before returning them. Mr. Smith gladly 
availed himself of this offer ; and the professor was 
so highly pleased with a perusal of these pieces 
that he immediately invited the young author to 
his house, where he was frequently afterwards a 
visitor and a guest. It was, indeed, a very com- 
mon thing, during this winter, for Smith to walk 
from the warehouse after eight o'clock p.m., down 
to Partick, and spend an hour at the Observatory. 
Through these visits he became also of course 
acquainted with the professor's son, Mr. John 
Nichol, then a student, and presently Professor of 
English Literature in the University of Glasgow. 
Dr. Nichol was thus the first man of literary 
eminence with whom Smith became intimate in 



THE BARD AXD HIS HERALD. 123 

Glasgow, and he remained to his death an ardent 
and steadfast friend. 

In reviewing the University Album of this year, 
Mr. Gilfillan made another laudatory reference to 
Smith — presenting him before the students as one 
worthy of their emulation. And Smith having, 
during winter, sent him some other productions 
of his poetic genius — particularly a poem entitled 
" The Old Manor House" — Gilfillan in the follow- 
ing spring wrote a long article in the Critic, on 
" A New Poet in Glasgow," in which he not only 
gave copious extracts from several of the MSS. be- 
fore him, but published some of the poems entire. 
It was a rare, if not altogether unprecedented pro- 
ceeding for a critic thus to review poems of a living 
writer which were still only in manuscript, and Mr. 
Gilfillan accounted for doing so by saying — " His 
(Smith's) aim is at present partly to get his poetry 
printed, but principally to w 7 ork up his way to a 
situation more congenial to his mind, more worthy 
of his powers, and allowing him more leisure for 
his favourite pursuits." And he called earnestly 



124 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

" specially on Glasgow friends, ever generous and 
warm-hearted, to look to it, that they neglect not 
one of the finest poets — perhaps, indeed, one pro- 
mising to be the finest since Campbell — their good 
city had produced." 

These notices created a very considerable sen- 
sation in the literary world. The extracts were 
generally accepted at the time as verifying the 
commendations of the Dundee critic ; and the 
reading public were not only prepared to welcome 
the coming poet, but ardent in expectation of his 
first volume. Seldom, indeed, has any work been 
waited for as the " Life Drama " was. The service 
which Mr. Gilfillan thus rendered Smith in herald- 
ing his advent into the sacred circle of literature, 
and preparing the public for his audience, was very 
great. In one day, and before he had himself 
published anything but a few short pieces in the 
Glasgow Citizen, Smith had become famous, and 
talked of as the new and genuine poet in every 
literary club and coterie in the kingdom. Letters of 
congratulation, from entire strangers, and distant 



THE BARD AXD HIS HERALD. 



places, began to flow in upon him. Some ardent 
lovers of letters even undertook long journeys in 
order to see and encourage him. Thus several 
valuable friendships were then formed by him for 
life. Among these friendships, not the least note- 
worthy was that of Mr. Daniel Lawson, Glasgow. 
That gentleman, immediately after the appearance 
of Mr. Gilflllan's notices in the Critic, procured for 
himself copies of these, which he circulated in the 
city among persons likely to be interested in, and 
of service to, the young struggling bard. He also 
sought out Smith, formed a personal acquaintance 
with him, and invited him to his house, which be- 
came for him during his future residence in Glas- 
gow almost a second home. About this time, also, 
I had the pleasure, through a friend intimate with 
Hugh Macdonald, of securing Smith's introduction 
to that gifted, most genial, and somewhat eccentric 
man ; and a very close, endeared, and lasting 
friendship was immediately formed between them. 
Through Macdonald he was next introduced to 
James Heddenvich, Esq., editor of the Citizen, who 



126 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

shortly after introduced him to Mr. Patrick Proctor 
Alexander, at that time a frequent contributor to 
the Citizen and other Glasgow newspapers, and who 
became Smith's biographer and editor of " Last 
Leaves." 

As it was towards the close of 185 1 that he 
formed acquaintance with these literary men of 
Glasgow, and as he removed to Edinburgh at the 
beginning of 1854, their educational influence upon 
him was both late and brief. They may have 
helped to perfect the poet, but they cannot be re- 
garded as having aided in the making of him. He 
was, therefore, to a greater extent than some seem 
disposed to admit, a truly self-taught man, enjoying 
only the most meagre advantages of schools and 
of society in his youth, and indeed till the time at 
which he became an author. 

The truth is, his great teacher, as in the case of 
every genuine poet, was Nature. He was educated 
by her far more than by either men or books. She 
was his first teacher and his best. His works give 
evidence of this in various ways. 



THE BARD AXD HIS HERALD. 127 

His chief characteristic, alike in verse and prose, 
is that of literary painter from actual nature. He 
cannot be said properly to be dramatic : nor is he 
to any great extent philosophical — in fact, he often 
spake, at least, so disparagingly of mental philoso- 
phy, as rather reflected disadvantageously upon 
himself. At the same time, he frequently mani- 
fested, even in his earliest works, no mean power 
of mental and moral analysis. But he did so only 
in brief, though often subtle and beautiful, gleams 
of genius. In sustained analysis of mind and cha- 
racter he rather failed. He struggled, however, 
after attaining this power, and so successfully, too, 
as indicated that, had his life been prolonged he 
might have possessed it in large measure. But 
after all, it is analogical rather than in analytical 
power that he excels. Two things indeed he 
could do well — depict nature and interpret nature ; 
but it must be nature in the individual and minute, 
not in the whole and the comprehensive or com- 
plex. These, in truth, he could do as few poets 
have done. As was truly said in a notice of his 



128 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

earliest works, "No poet that has ever lived has 
excelled Smith in the beauty and exquisite analo- 
gical perception displayed in his images from 
nature." The individual man, too, he could often 
well depict, but it was by, as with a glance of in- 
tuition, discerning his differential attribute, or dis- 
tinguishing characteristic. In short, what he most 
excels in is, scenic description and individual por- 
traiture. His scenes and portraits, however, are 
almost never imaginary ones — they are pictures 
from life. His best pieces and passages are those 
which were written under the inspiration of thought 
brooding over objects of actual and immediate 
vision. What he has derived from the inspiration 
of friends and books, is ever tame compared with 
what his own excogitation brought him, when 
gazing with " the faculty Divine " upon the world 
of human and physical phenomena. Let any 
thoughtful reader put his works to the test, and he 
cannot fail to be convinced of this. Let him con- 
trast, for instance, " Edwin of Deira " with " City 
Poems." In the former, he draws inspiration more 



THE BARD AND HIS HERALD. 129 

from book-world and the distant past ; in the latter, 
from the world actually before him ; and notwith- 
standing all the higher polish and poetic finish of 
the versification of Edwin, it not only lacks the 
fire and richness, but further, does not possess the 
heart, soul, and rounded wholeness of some of the 
poems in the earlier volume. Most assuredly, had 
"Edwin of Deira" been Smith's first work, he 
would not on its merits, great as they are, have 
been received by the public as he was ; and we 
venture to predict, in opposition to the judgment 
of some eminent critics, it will not live in the me- 
mories of men, and be quoted from in future, as 
his other and earlier productions. Thus will it be 
shown that those friends who endeavoured to divert 
him from the early and natural bent of his poetic 
spirit which produced his first poems, committed a 
grave mistake. 

What, under changed circumstances and new 
monitors, and with approved modern models set 
before him, he gained in classical correctness, would 
almost seem to have been at the cost of losing a 

K 



130 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

measure of naturalness and originality. One of 
the chief poetic tendencies of our day is to regard 
refinement too much. Naturalness is too often 
enervated and force lost in finish. Over-refining 
is effeminating. And Smith at first gave promise 
of heralding a new era in poetry, or at least of ini- 
tiating a return to a more Burns-like robustness 
of tone and treatment. Many deeming they saw, 
amidst all the extravagances of " A Life Drama," 
indications of this, heartily hailed his advent as a 
poet. And it would, perhaps, have been better for 
his fame, had his muse, purged of the follies of its 
youth, fulfilled that promise. His place in the 
literature of the age would then have been more 
distinctly defined, and his influence upon it more 
potent even than it is. 

But to return to our narrative. Smith, knowing 
that the public — now prepared by the extracts 
which had been laid before them — awaited the 
appearance of his poems in their full form, devoted 
every available moment to preparation for publica- 
tion. Mr. Gilfillan had suggested to him, however, 



THE BARD AND HIS HERALD. 131 

that the select literary world would be best satis- 
fied with some longer poem than any he had yet 
written, in which the sustained concentration of 
his powers might be shown ; and at once he 
perceived the justness of the suggestion. But as 
no subject for such an effort had yet occurred to 
his mind, he began to entertain the thought of 
attempting to fuse the detached pieces he had 
already composed into one extensive mould, 
formed after the plan of one of them, entitled " A 
Life Fragment," the first draught of which, from 
his own pen, I have in my possession ; while a 
second improved and slightly extended copy- 
was among the papers sent for inspection to Gil- 
fillan. This was to become, when thus expanded, 
" A Life Drama." It was, indeed, a difficult and 
hazardous conception this to work out. It could 
not but prove so far a failure. It was almost a 
necessity that it should bear, more or less, traces of 
being a patch-work ; and the originally detached 
lyrics could not but suffer much in their intrinsic 
value by the process of fusion. When he first 

K 2 



132 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

mentioned to me this design, I strongly advised 
him against its prosecution, although I had great 
confidence in his powers of adaptation. Mr. Gil- 
fillan also expressed doubt of the feasibility of the 
project. Nothing could prevent him, however, 
from making the venture. The plot — so far as 
there is any in "A Life Drama" — was soon formed 
in outline ; and he immediately proceeded with the 
work of detaching, transposing, piecing, uniting, 
and supplementing, with great toil, patience, care, 
and ingenuity. As the work advanced, and 
he rehearsed it stage by stage in our walks, I 
became more and more astonished at his ability 
and fertility of thought, It was thus " A Life 
Drama " took shape and development. Was it 
done at a dash ? No, verily. 

1 1 The full faced moon, 

Set round with stars, in at the casement looked, 

And saw him write and write ; and when the moon 

Was waning dim upon the edge of morn, 

Still sat he writing, thoughtful-eyed and pale." 
* * * * * * 

Great joy he had ; for thought came glad and thick, 

As leaves upon a tree at primrose time ; 



THE BARD AXD HIS HERALD. 133 

And as he wrote, his task the lovelier grew, 
Like April unto May, or as a child, 
A smile in the lap of life, by fine degrees 
Orbs to a maiden, walking with meek eyes 
In atmosphere of beauty round her breathed. 
He wrote all winter in an olden room 
Hallowed with glooms and books." 

And summer, too, had come and gone before his 
task was done. 

These facts regarding the history of Mr. Smith's 
first published poem are not generally known, but 
they account in great measure for the chief defects 
and blemishes of the work. They have also an 
important bearing on the literary character and 
acumen of the Rev. G. Gilfillan. 

Some writers have very broadly charged him 
with over-praising "A Life Drama" in the pages 
of the Eclectic and Critic, and so encouraging 
rather than correcting the spasmodic spirit of the 
young author. The sins and follies of that work, 
therefore, whatever they may be, are often thus 
to some extent rolled and made to lie at his door. 
But these writers, among whom Aytoun cannot 



134 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

be exempted, have dene this either in ignorance 
of, or by, more or less culpably, ignoring the 
above facts. The real truth is, when Gilfillan wrote 
in these magazines heralding a new poet, he had 
never either seen or heard of " A Life Drama," 
and could not consequently write about it. That 
work had not then been written; nay, as a work, 
the chaos of its creation had not come in the 
poet's mind. They were a collection of short 
and, all except one, complete poems, that were 
subjected to Mr. Gilfillan's verdict, and lay before 
him in MS. when he wrote to these magazines. 
And, as has been said above, he rather discouraged 
than otherwise their fusion into one whole. It 
is not consequently just to accuse him, as has 
too often been done, of having then and there 
almost unqualifiedly eulogised "A Life Drama." 
Indeed to one who knows, and at the time, knew 
intimately all the facts of the case, the criticisms 
that have often been made on Gilfillan's early 
notices of Smith, appear to constitute one of 
the most unreasonable passages in the history 



THE BARD AND HIS HERALD. 135 

of modern literature. It is really wonderful how 
it all arose* Possibly, however, the oracles of 
literature may sometimes be thus generally led 
astray by following too implicity some first voice 
that sounds from the temple. But the fact is 
indisputable that Alexander Smith owed more 
as a literary man, and specially as a poet, to George 
Gilfillan than to all others. It is certain, too, that 
Smith thought so himself, and once readily con- 
fessed it, whatever reticence he may have main- 
tained when moving in circles in which it had 
become fashionable to depreciate whatever came 
from the Dundee critic. And eulogistically as 
Gilfillan wrote of the poet in his youth, all judges 
do and must allow, that Smith's after career more 
than verified the predictions of his enthusiastic 
herald. 

But before his first volume was ready for the 
press, the month of July came round, and with 
it his week of holidays. So the MS. was locked 
up in his desk, and we started on another tour 
through the highlands. On this occasion we 



136 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

went, first by train to Dundee, where he called 
on the Rev. Mr. Gilfillan, and had an hour's 
consultation with him. Thence we proceeded the 
same afternoon to Perth, and next morning com- 
menced our pedestrian tour. Our course was 
by Crieff, Comrie, and Loch Earn ; thence west- 
ward by Loch Lubnaig to Callander, and home- 
ward, still on foot, to Stirling, where we took train 
to Glasgow. 

In the meantime, also, he had formed acquaint- 
ance with a young lady who became another, 
and the last celebrated by him, of the " fair 
shapes," who in after-years floated "through the 
gardens of his memory ; " and regarding whom, 
he shortly after being introduced to her, wrote 
to me thus : — 

" is decidedly the cleverest girl I have met 

with. I have seen her harpoon that blundering 

booby D with a lance of wit, in fine style. 

She often says fine things in conversation ; is a 
capital hand at a compliment, as, for instance : 
D had spoken to her of me as a poet ! and 



THE BARD AXD HIS HERALD. 137 

as such I was introduced. I wrote her two son- 
nets. A few nights after, I met her, and Ave had 
a walk. She inquired when I intended to 
publish ; I said something of not being ambitious 
of seeing my productions line portmanteaus ; she 
said, ' Not portmanteaus — they would line memo- 
ries.' Ye gods, my strong imagination felt a 
crown dropping upon my head ! 

"I have got on pretty well to day; — got a 
partner ; commenced my speech, and got my 
annual dose of cold — a severe one this time. 
This cursed weather has done it, and Cardinal 
Wiseman is the cause of this darkness — confound 
him. 

" I think I repeated one of the sonnets I speak 
of, to you, up Clyde side. Here is the other : — 

" Our yearning hearts are deeper than our souls. 
And love, than knowledge, is diviner food • 
Though with dead hopes life's rugged paths are strewed ; 
Though in our ears the muffled death-bell tolls ; 
And through the silent streets the black hearse rolls ; 
Yet, the young flowers are laughing in the wood — ■ 
Where the green linnet feeds her nested brood ; 



138 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Yet, rosy children sport on primrose knolls — 
Far heard o'er summer leas are summer birds, 
And so 'tis in my spirit's dismalness ; 
Love is a brightness, that will ne'er depart: 
Thine image sleepeth in my soul's caress, 
Like a sweet thought within a poet's heart 
Ere it is born in joy and golden words. 

" I hope you will excuse this scrawl. The fact 
is I do not feel very well — have no books to read, 
and two hours to kill. 

" I am, most truly yours, 

"A. Smith." 

For this young lady Smith entertained much 
admiration. He came to regret, however, that 
his acquaintance with her had occasioned her 
to cherish towards him a tenderer passion than 
he could reciprocate — a regret not untinged by 
sorrowful reflections that he had perhaps given 
her cause for cherishing that passion. And it 
may, indeed, be regarded as probable that he was 
working upon his own sombre and wavering ex- 
periences in connection with this episode of love, 



THE BARD AND HIS HERALD. 139 

when he wrote " Squire Maurice," one of his 
finest productions. Through some of even his 
later poetic effusions also, there runs a note of 
reminiscent sadness which may not have been 
wholly artistic or merely fictitious. He was of 
too noble a nature to forget, or soon cease to 
mourn the wound he may have, however inad- 
vertently, inflicted on a gentle and over-susceptive 
young heart. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

9L &tfe Brama: ftg Critics, t\)t public 
antr $oet 

" For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask 
The classic poet's well-conned task ? " 

" Approach those masters, o'er whose tomb 
Immortal laurels ever bloom : 
Instructive of the feebler bard, 
Still from the grave their voice is heard ; 
From them, and from the paths they showed 
Choose honoured guide and practised road." 

Scott. 

OMITH having accepted a generous offer made 
to him by Bogue, the publisher, was now busy- 
supplying copy to the press and correcting proof. 
And at length, at the close of the year 1852, his 
first book, dated 1853, appeared and created a wide 
and profound sensation. 

1 ' That was a hit ! 
The world is murmuring like a hive of bees — 
He is its theme." 

Newspapers, magazines, and reviews were all can- 



A LIFE DRAMA. 141 

vassing its merits. Of praise there was no lack, 
from some, indeed, no limit ; but adverse criticism 
was not altogether withheld. To revise, however, 
the judgments of the Eclectic, Critic, Leader, 
AtJienamm, and the quarterlies, is beyond the 
province of these pages — they are devoted to the 
life, rather than to the w r ritings of the poet. 

Smith had now indeed acquired fame, perhaps 
by this first w r ork too much fame — more than the 
work deserved on its real merits ; though these were, 
as must ever be confessed, great, and more than 
could easily be in future sustained by the author. 
From the first, he and his most intimate friends 
perceived and felt this ; indeed, the rapid sale of 
the book, and the laudations of the many critics, 
awakened expectations that caused him to join 
trembling with his mirth. He would have been 
more than satisfied, he often confessed, with 
earning a little less fame from his first work ; for 
while he did earnestly 

" Strive for the poet's crown, he ne'er forgot 

How poor are fancy's blooms to thoughtful fruits ; 



142 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

That gold and crimson mornings, though more bright 
Than soft blue days, are scarcely half their worth." 

Besides, no one was more conscious of the 
defects and blemishes of " A Life Drama " than 
himself. Before it was out of the press, indeed, 
his own taste and judgment had condemned much 
of it ; and greatly did he marvel often at the 
unmingled praise bestowed on it by some of its 
critics. The book was the too rapid product of a 
sensitive mind under the heat of unnatural and 
unhealthy excitement, which several things had 
combined to effect. He had been cradled amidst 
political agitation. His youth had been passed 
in the very focus of Scottish chartism. In 1848 
occurred the last French revolution, and the reflux 
of that movement had been felt in this country, as 
was manifest in riotous risings in various parts of 
the kingdom, but especially in Glasgow. There 
the mob had at mid-day broken into shops in the 
very centre of the city ; the military had been 
called out ; and armed pensioners, too prompt to 
obey a hasty command, had fired upon the people, 



A LIFE DRAMA. 143 

fatally shedding blood, which awakened the feeling 
of revenge in some, and alarm in all ; so that the 
whole of the inhabitants were thrown for days 
into a state of ferment. And Smith had been a 
spectator of the most notable of these riots. 

No thoughtful and sensitive young man could be 
altogether unmoved or uninfluenced in spirit by 
the political agitations of those days. He was no 
politician, however, and still less was he a chartist. 
And with all his poetic sensitiveness, he was as 
little affected by these circumstances and events, 
as any one could be. Indeed, by 1848 his life was 
being spent very much beyond the sphere of 
politics. He was now living, as far as the sterner 
necessities of his lot would allow, in a dreamland 
of poesy, to which he had been lured, and where 
his spirit was being entranced by voices, among 
which that of Keats took the lead. And the 
riotous voices of the ruder world around, bursting 
violently in upon this poetic region, seemed only 
to disturb him, and engage his attention for a 
passing moment. 'The deep currents of his mind 



144 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

were scarcely touched by the boisterous political 
events of the time. These never moved him to 
write one political stanza, even though he had 
taken to the reading of Ebenezer Elliott. The fact 
of his doing so may seem contradictory of all this ; 
but the fact is, it was Elliott's strains of genuine 
poetry, and not his politics nor patriotism that 
fascinated Smith. 

But a stronger cause of unrest of spirit consisted 
in his own present and prospective circumstances. 
He was engaged in an employment uncongenial 
to his mind ; had ardent longings after a more 
literary life ; was feeling often the disadvantage 
of a defective education ; was necessitated to 
prosecute his favourite studies under this disad- 
vantage, and also " cabined, cribbed, confined," 
from want of means and leisure ; with little or no 
visible prospect, too, of bettering his circumstances ; 
and having no one of influence among his relatives 
or friends to whom he could look for help or 
guidance. In such circumstances it was not 
wonderful that, patient as he was, his spirit 



A LIFE DRAMA. 145 

should sometimes become despondent, fretful, and 
irritated. 

Then, lastly and chiefly, there came so suddenly 
upon him that great burst of praise, by means of 
Mr. Gilfillan's article in the Eclectic. That first 
blare of fame could not but produce, on the mind 
of so young a man, an excitement, for awhile, un- 
favourable for the conception and execution of a 
great poem. But unfortunately, it was precisely at 
this time that the plan of " A Life Drama " was 
conceived, concocted, and executed. 

And further, while the circumstances of its origin 
were such, the directing influences of the moment 
were, unhappily, even more unpropitious. Keats 
was no longer now the chief controlling spirit of 
his genius. The spell of Bailey's " Festus," rather, 
was now upon him. And too much under his 
influence, it is to be feared, the composition of the 
work was commenced and carried out. Evidence 
of this is very apparent when one compares "A 
Life Drama," with the previously written " Life 
Fragment," of which it was to some extent an 

L 



146 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

expansion. The latter is throughout in conception, 
spirit, and treatment, far more Keatsean, — quiet, 
hazy, dreamy. It is a very different spirit which 
animates " A Life Drama." The mind of Smith, 
in fact, was never in such an abnormal state as 
went he wrote that work. Hence is it that it is 
so unlike his other works, unlike the man himself, 
and reflects his own spirit less than anything else 
that he has written. Every one after reading it 
felt, in coming into personal contact with the 
author for the first time, a shock of pleasant 
surprise ; and no wonder. As he has said himself 
in his fragmentary poem on " Edinburgh," he sung 
them " urged by passionate unrest." In this 
state of mind, then, the poem was too hastily 
conceived, then, by far too hurriedly written during 
the nights of 1852, and next, too quickly sent to 
the press. This is the real cause of its imper- 
fections. Before it was quite finished, its author 
had himself begun to see its unnatural feverishness, 
and other faults ; but the public had been pro- 
mised, and was waiting for the book ; and so it 



A LIFE DRAMA. 147 

required to go before the world, ere he had 
time to perfect it by calm reflective thought. 
And it is almost certain that had it lain for a few 
months in manuscript in Mr. Smith's desk, for 
reconsideration, it would never have been pre- 
sented to the public as it is ; much of it would 
have been recast, and much of it pruned. But 
written as it was, the chief wonder connected with 
it is, that it is what it is. Very few indeed could, at 
his age, in such circumstances, and after such a 
fashion produce a work equal to it. It is a marvel- 
lous production, and a knowledge of all the facts 
relating to its composition only tends to make it 
appear more marvellous. The fame it brought him 
was great, but it was well merited, and undoubt- 
edly it was by him much prized. But that fame 
was also perilous to a young beginner in author- 
ship. To be raised so high so suddenly, how- 
ever sweet to the poet, was to the man — ay, and 
to the poet, too, of necessity trying. 

Smith, however, bore the ordeal with a magna- 
nimity rare at any age, but doubly rare in youth ; 

L 2 



148 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

which disarmed envy, won the admiration of all 
around him, and evinced that the man was even 
greater than the poet. Few have ever walked 
forth from being crowned with such a wreath of 
laurels, with a heart so little changed, and as meek 
and manly a bearing, as he did. In fact, few with 
a poetic temperament could do so. To his fellow- 
workmen, acquaintances, and friends, he was the 
same as ever. His fame turned other heads : his 
own it never turned. 

It was at once amusing and pitiable to see, day 
after day, some lackadaisical-looking youths stand- 
ing at the warehouse-door at four or eight o'clock 
p.m., to get a glimpse of the poet as he came out, 
and to hear the whisperings — " There he's, there 
he's " ! — whisperings which he sometimes heard, 
and was wont to hitch his shoulders, muttering 
an "Uh!" as, after hurried steps behind him, and 
he was immediately the object of a not very 
polite stare. But there were others than in- 
discreet youths who half amused and half annoyed 
him. 



A LIFE DRAMA. 149 

He was now invited frequently to dinner and 
evening parties by persons of good position in 
society, and men of literary taste. But to be 
lionised, however sweet it may be, and generally 
is, especially to talented young men, he not only 
had no liking for, but felt a very positive aversion 
to it ; while against the dissipating influences of 
the festive board, which have proved so irresistible 
and destructive to many of the sensitive sons of 
genius, he stood watchful and invincible. Some of 
those to whose table he was invited, and several 
whom he met there as fellow guests, desired to know 
how they might be helpful in procuring for him a 
situation more congenial to his mind than that he 
was presently still engaged in. And Smith was 
wont to relate, with much humorous enjoyment, 
that on one such occasion, a wealthy paterfamilias 
asked him into a private room, and after question- 
ing him regarding the kind of situation he would 
like, said he was a believer in phrenology, under- 
stood the science perfectly, and desired Smith to 
permit him to manipulate his head, being confident 



ISO ALEXANDER SMITH. 

that he would thereby discover what trade or pro- 
fession would best suit and be most profitable to 
him. This request being granted, and the poet's 
head having been scientifically examined with 
great care, the phrenologistic old gentleman, as- 
suming a wise and patronising air, seriously 
advised his young friend to give up all idea im- 
mediately of prosecuting poetry or literature as a 
profession, as the fates were dead against him in 
these paths. He would not, he could not, succeed 
in either. He had been endowed for another kind 
of life altogether ; in fact, he was constituted phre- 
nologically for trading in dry goods, and, according 
to his best judgment, the business of a drysalter 
would suit him better than any other : and as he 
had influence with one of the chief houses in that 
trade, he had no doubt that he could soon procure 
him a situation as learner there. Smith had only 
to signify acquiescence, and he would see about it 
at once. But Smith, seeing that the generous old 
gentleman was riding a hobby, with expressions of 
thanks for so much kindliness of intention, re- 



A LIFE DRAMA. 151 

quested a day or two to think of the matter, and 
so escaped. 

As illustrative of the general fame of the young 
poet in the city at this time, one incident of an 
amusing nature may be given. A rather popular 
preacher in the east of Glasgow, being informed 
by one of his congregation that Alexander Smith, 
"the new poet of Glasgow," had of late been 
several times a hearer at his evening sermons, felt 
not a little elated, and began to think there must 
be more in his preaching than in his humility 
he had himself imagined, seeing it could attract 
such a man of genius. But, alas, on making 
further inquiry, he learned, to his mortification, 
that the attraction was not the preacher in the 
pulpit, but a tradesman's pretty daughter in one 
of the pews. On this discovery the reverend 
gentleman used no more efforts to form personal 
acquaintance with the poet. 

"The new Glasgow Poet," or "the Poet of 
Glasgow," were titles now frequently applied to 
him, but which he very much disliked to hear or 



j 52 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

read. One of the most respectable and extensive 
booksellers of the city, whose shop was near to 
the warehouse in which Smith wrought, on receiv- 
ing the first parcel of " A Life Drama," advertised 
it by a large handbill in his window, as " A Life 
Drama, by Alexander Smith, the Glasgow Poet," 
and Smith's eye falling on the announcement as 
he went to his work, his modesty was so stung, 
that he immediately sent a courteous note, re- 
questing the placard to be, as a favour, removed, 
seeing he made no pretensions to the character it 
ascribed to him ; and the offensive notice instantly 
disappeared. 

The chief and almost only difference observable 
in his manner of life from the time that he became 
known to the public, consisted in his mode of 
spending the Sabbath. Up till that time he had 
been a very regular attender of public worship 
on that day ; but now his Sabbaths were most 
frequently passed altogether apart from the church. 
Fidelity to truth demands this fact to be recorded. 
The auses however, of his being now more fre- 



A LIFE DRAMA. 153 

quently than previously "with nature on the 
Sabbath day/' it is not so easy to assign. But 
this much is certain, the change was not the 
consequence of the abandonment of any religious 
conviction. It was merely a defection in practice, 
not in principle, and consequently one which he 
would not himself defend. It was observable at 
the time, and is noticed here, because he was from 
early youth of a religious temperament. It was 
certainly from religious feeling, awakened in him 
apparently by painful events recorded near the 
beginning of this memoir, that he was induced 
to entertain thoughts of entering the Christian 
ministry. That purpose was his own, and not 
merely the fond fancy of partial parents to see 
their clever boy some day "wag his head in a 
pu'pit." He was, however, always of a reserved 
disposition regarding personal religious life and 
experience. In our more private and confidential 
moments of conversation, notwithstanding, he 
became occasionally communicative respecting this 
hidden life ; and often showed that the great 



154 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

truths of Divine revelation had touched the centre 
of his soul and awakened within him both thought 
and feeling. He was ever, moreover, of a reveren- 
tial spirit. No one ever heard him jest or talk 
lightly on religious subjects ; nor could he enjoy 
or tolerate such levity in others. His mind was 
also richly imbued with Bible-truth ; and his 
highest early poetic aspirations inclined towards 
working some of the historic characters of the 
sacred volume into an epic or dramatic poem. 
At the time he was engaged, for example, writing 
"A Life Fragment," — one of his earliest pieces, — 
begun about his nineteenth year, and which formed 
the germ of " A Life Drama," — although the fruit 
proved very unlike the bud — he was also, from a 
poetic standpoint, pondering the Life of Moses ; 
and on several occasions spake of it as affording 
peculiarly rich material for a great epic ; expressed 
his surprise at no one having attempted it, and 
his hope of being able himself some day to treat 
it in a worthy manner. When asked whether he 
had made any commencement of such a work, 



A LIFE DRAMA. 155 

he answered, Xo — it was a subject far too high 
above his reach presently ; would require greater 
maturity of mind than he now possessed, and 
would after all demand years of study : but he 
meant to keep it before him. His ideal poet, too, 
at that time certainly was 

"One who should hallow poetry to God." 

When he wrote so regarding the poet who 

" Must ere long arise 
And with a regal song sun- crown this age," 

he wrote as his heart felt, his spirit prompted, and 
his mind approved. Indeed, his religiousness of 
spirit in those days reflected itself in his verse to 
an extent that his works do not now indicate. In 
"A Life Drama" — by no means the product of 
a genuine inspiration, but rather of an impulse 
suddenly kindled by " strange fire," through read- 
ing such works as Bailey's " Festus " — his poetic 
soul rushed almost wildly through a new and 
foreign channel ; and he became unfortunately so 
far liable to be misjudged, by many, for this his 



156 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

first book. Several of the poems of which that 
work was composed were of a truly religious tone. 
One such, and among the first written, entitled 
" The Consecration/' containing the song of 
Earth's history, lies before me in MS., which 
though neither after the manner of Milton, nor 
Young, nor Cowper, nor Watts, nor Montgomery, 
breathes a truly religious spirit. And here is 
another piece of those days, which I extract from 
a letter, not doubting that the judicious and 
generous will pardon any juvenilities discernible in 
it, in consideration of its being written about his 
nineteenth year, and also of its general character 
and worth. It is hardly needful to premise 
that it is addressed to a student of theology. 



4 1 O thou of thoughtful brow and daring heart, 
Speed on thy lofty path like feathered dart ; 
Who can withstand the siren voice of fame, 
Nor bend in worship to that shade — A name : 
Follow the promptings of thy burning soul, 
Sweep like a tempest to that distant goal ; 
Toil on, thou noble heart — nor let despair 
Unnerve thy soul ; but nobly, boldly dare — 



A LIFE DRAMA. 157 

Dare with thine arm to bear the Cross unfurled. 
And gather, 'neath its ample folds — a world. 
This be thy task : what though no marble tomb 
In gloomy grandeur frowns o'er thy long home ! 
If not a leading star in Fame's bright van, 
Know this — the first was ne'er the noblest man, 
The world's best blood was not a blazing sun, 
His life was unrevered ; his grave unknown. 
Prove not a traitor to thy sacred trust 
Through love of life, nor passion, nor the lust 
Of gold. Fight well, thou warrior of God, 
And cleave a path to heaven's bright abode — 
Return with garlands from the holy war, 
Then shine beyond the sky a meteor star." 

But even the " Life Drama " itself contains not a 
few indications of the more religious spirit of those 
earlier poems out of which it was compiled. Be- 
sides the passage on the " poet who should ere long 
arise," already referred to, that other on the degra- 
dation of the human soul (pages 28 — 35), may be 
instanced, with the remark that the part containing 
a turbid love passion did not exist in the original. 
What could be finer, after the " wail " of the pre- 
ceding lines, than this — 

"Brothers, hush ! the Lord Christ's hands 
Ev'n now are stretched in blessing o'er the sea and o'er the lands." 



158 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

And the close too — 

" Lo ! I see long blissful ages, when these mammon days are done, 
Stretching like a golden ev'ning forward to the setting sun." 

Mark, also, how, at the close of " A Life Drama," 
the hero emerging at length out of the whirlpool 
of passion in which he "tore at all the creeds," 
confesses to his friend thus — 

" Charles. He told me once, 

The saddest thing that can befall a soul, 
Is when it loses faith in God and woman ; 
For he had lost them both — Lost I those gems — 
Though the world's throne stood empty in my path, 
I would go wandering back into my childhood, 
Searching for them with tears. 

" Edward. Let him go 

Alone upon his waste and dreary road, 
He will return to the old faith he learned 
Beside his mother's knee. That memory 
That haunts him, as the sweet and gracious moon 
Haunts the poor outcast earth, will lead him back 
To happiness and God." 

And as if the poet himself were returning to the 
purer and truer purpose of his earlier youth, he 
closes the book with the noble sentiment — 



A LIFE DRAMA. 159 

"I will go forth 'mong men, not mailed in scorn, 
But in the armour of a pure intent. 
Great duties are before me, and great songs ; 
And whether crowned orcrownless, when I fall, 
It matters not, so as God's work is done. 
I've learned to prize the quiet lightning-deed, 
Not the applauding thunder at its heels, 
Which men call Fame." 



He that could even think that thought, — the man 
who could write these noble lines, must have 
had something truly noble, genuinely Christian in 
his spirit. And let it be remembered that these 
fine and truly religious passages are fragments of 
his earliest poems. 

That he was ever, however, even in his earliest 
years, what is commonly understood by the phrase 
" a religious poet," is not here meant to be asserted. 
All that is maintained is, that he was truly religious 
in spirit. The sensuousness even, or as some think 
and have said, the super-sensuousness of "A Life 
Drama," did not characterize those poems which 
he submitted to the critical eye of the Rev. George 
Gilfillan. They were free from that, perhaps the 



i6o ALEXANDER SMITH. 

chief, fault of that work. And though after its pub- 
lication he did " proceed to veil the statue of the 
Venus, and to uncover those of the Apollo and 
Jupiter," my opinion, formed from long and close 
intercourse with him, is that his early religiousness 
of poetic spirit suffered partial decadence for a 
time, from want of depth of religious thought, and 
that owing to a combination of causes. First of 
all, in part, from personal idiosyncrasy. 

Naturally, instinctively he shrank from any 
process of lengthened logical analysis, or abstruse 
scientific investigation. He did not really seem 
to dislike religious science more than he did all 
mental science ; nor religious disputation more than 
political disputation ; but he disliked them all, and, 
that apparently very much alike. Indeed, he not 
inaptly describes himself, when in his essay on 
" Books and Gardens," he makes " the doctor " say, 
" There is no use speaking on such matters to our 
incurious, solitary friend here, who could bask 
comfortably in sunshine for a century, without 
once inquiring whence came the light and the 



A LIFE DRAMA. 161 

heat""* He was therefore always more likely to shirk 
than to fight u the spectres of the mind " — to avoid 
them than to lay them. In short, he was born 
more a poet than a philosopher. The strongest pro- 
pension of his mind was to poetry, not in any true 
sense to philosophy. The greatest of poets, indeed, 
are precisely those who have been most philosophic. 
And here from the first was the rock of peril in 
Smith's path : in order that he might rise to one of 
the highest seats in the temple of song, he required 
to overcome a natural aversion to deep scientific 
thinking on mental and moral truth, and a too 
great readiness to be satisfied with beauty merely, 
mainly, or per se. 

But— and as a second causative— in his early 
education he had no guide or adviser, and so was 
left to follow too freely his own impulses, which 
being followed become always more dominant. 
True mental discipline, such as may be gained in 
college life, he had not received. And the time 
available, in his adolescent age, for mental self- 

* " Dream thorp," page 265. 

M 



162 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

culture, was hardly sufficient even for the gratifica- 
tion of his strong poetic tendencies. 

As he advanced in life, however, he seems to 
have felt progressively the need of philosophic 
thought in loftiest song, and so — 

"Another and a nobler me " 

was rising within him ; and he was evidently in his 
later years looking into the arena of truth, and 
equipping himself for grappling there with the 
deeper questions of the human soul, and man's 
destiny. 

Further, being of a gentle and pacific nature, 
the Church early disappointed and dissatisfied 
him. The bitter conflicts of creeds, the often 
rancorous polemics, and acrimonious contentions of 
the clergy, divines, and theologians, were to him 
the most " wretched jangling" of all in this poor 
world. The almost incessant internal war-cries 
and actual wars of the Church, — which ought to 
have been the choicest sphere of concord, rest, and 
peace, — appeared to him to indicate that there was 
no rest to be found by entering her pale, and he 



A LIFE DRAMA. 163 

became evermore disposed to stand apart from her, 
as from an arena of discord. Alas ! how many 
such gifted, sensitive, thoughtful, and specially 
poetic minds ; how many of naturally the finest 
spirits of our country, have during this and past 
ages been repelled from the visible Church from 
the same cause ! 

But once more, unfortunately, the spirit of his 
first book, constrained the more strictly religious 
world to look askance upon him as a poet. The 
learned men of the Church, her ministers, and 
journalists failed, therefore, to hail and countenance 
him as heartily as others did, and he became 
through contact with kindred spirits a poet of the 
times. And here we come upon a fourth source 
of moulding or directing influence — the current 
poetic spirit of our age. It is not wonderful that 
in his early circumstances, at least, he should have 
been, in a large measure, influenced by that spirit. 
It is not in the loftiest sense a thoughtful one — not 
at any rate a thoughtfully religious one. We have 
hymn writers in abundance, and a few good ones ; 

M 2 



1 64 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

but no poet of our day has manifested any great 
depth of sound religious thought. The most emi- 
nent perhaps, is Keble ; but even he was after 
all only the most exquisite of hymnologists. In 
Tennyson's " In Memoriam " too, " that strain I 
heard was of a higher mood " than is common with 
other poets of our period. The poets and strictly 
literary men of our day have too generally devoted 
themselves merely, at best, to the aesthetics of 
religion. Theirs is the religion of sentiment 
oftener than that of strong sound sense ; of the 
imagination or fancy rather than of the intellect ; 
of the heart rather than of the head, — indeed 
sometimes as divorced from the head. Feeble 
are the hands that now essay to strike the harp 
of Milton, and feeble are the notes, which they 
evoke. It still waits the master spirit who shall 
wake its melody as of old. Smith was cast 
among men of another mould, and almost, and 
no marvel in so young a man, became one of them. 
It is to the credit, too, of the Rev. George 
Gilfillan that he early saw Smith's danger here, 



A LIFE DRAMA. 165 

and as he had been the first encourager of his 

muse, he was now the first to warn him ; when, 
soon after the publication of " A Life Drama," 
sketching him in his " Gallery of Literary 
Portraits," he wrote thus : — " Now here we think 
is the vital defect of the poem (A Life Drama), 
the one thing which prevents us applying to it the 
epithet 'great.' Mr. Smith is no infidel, and his 
poetry breathes at times an earnest spirit, but 
his views on such subjects are extremely vague 
and unformed. He does not seem sufficiently 
impressed with the conviction that, no poem ever 
has deserved the name of great, when not impreg- 
nated with religion, and when not rising into 
worship. His creed seems too much that of 
Keats, ' Beauty is truth — truth beauty.' We repeat 
that he should look back to the past, and think 
w T hat are the poems which have come down to us 
from it, most deeply stamped with the approba- 
tion of mankind, and which appear most likely to see 
and glorify the ages of the future. Are they not 
those which have been penetrated and inspired by 



1 66 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

moral purpose, and warmed by religious feeling ? 
We speak not of sectarian song, nor of the com- 
mon generation of hymns and hymn writers ; but 
we point to Dante's 'Divina Commedia ;' to all 
Milton's poems ; to Spenser's ' Fairy Queen ;' to 
Herbert's ■ Temple ;' to Young's ' Night Thoughts ;' 
to Thomson's ' Seasons ;' to some of the better 
strains of Pope and Johnson ; to Cowper, to 
Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. 
The poet who would not merely shine the 
meteor of a moment, the stare of fools, and the 
temporary pet of the public, but would aspire 
to send his name down, in thunder and music, 
through the echoing aisles of the future, and 
become a benevolent and beloved potentate over 
distant ages, and millions yet unborn, must tread 
in their footsteps, and seek after the hallowed 
sources of their inspiration." This was timely 
and noble advice, to which he doubtless gave 
heed. 

Mr. Smith, then, never, perhaps, possessed any 
such well defined religious creed as would satisfy 



A LIFE DRAMA. 167 

the schools of theology. That, however, is in very 
many instances in this country a possession of 
no great value. And one may be none the less 
a true Christian that he is not well versed in 
all the subtleties of a modern Scottish scribe or 
Pharisee. But after all, that he was to the close 
of his life of a genuinely religious spirit, is made 
abundantly evident by the works of his maturer 
years ; especially by his prose works, and most 
of all by his essays, as in " Dreamthorp," where 
we have more of the inner life of the author 
revealed than in his poems. Who, for instance, 
can read the essays on " Death, and the Fear of 
Dying," and " Christmas," without regarding their 
author as writing them under the shadow of the 
Cross, with a spirit made reverent by contempla- 
tion of Him who hung thereon ? 

And what cause have we to doubt that it was 
the same religiousness of mind which prompted 
him in his early youth to think of making Moses 
the subject of an epic, which induced him, at length, 
to select as the topic of his last, and his only 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



historic poem, the introduction of Christianity into 
Britain ? Indeed, that also was a subject which had 
early, and so long, engaged his thoughts — as wit- 
ness " An Evening at Home," which forms part of 
his first published volume, and contains what must 
be regarded as the germ of " Edwin of Deira." 
Further, a review of his works as a whole, furnishes 
pleasing indications that, as a writer, he was be- 
coming, through the mellowing influences of years, 
and increasing realization of life's responsibilities 
and solemnities, ever more Christian in thought 
and expression. In fine, though he was no avowed 
or exemplary churchman, he would fail in more 
than Christian charity, who would venture to pro- 
nounce him other than a sincere Christian. 

But let us return from endeavouring to analyse 
the character of the man, to continue the tracing 
of the more external events of his history. 

From Mr. Bogue he had received ^"ioo for his 
first book, and with this sum in hand, and a path 
opened to a literary career, he resolved to leave the 
trade of designer at the termination of his year's 



A LIFE DRAMA. 169 

engagement. In the course of a few months this 
purpose was fulfilled ; and as his father and the rest 
of the family removed about the same time to 
Williamsburgh, near Paisley, he took a trip through 
England towards London, in order to see the coun- 
try, and form acquaintance with some of the 
literary men of the capital. On this trip he was 
accompanied by Mr. John Nichol, and in the course 
of it I received a number of interesting letters 
from him, of some of which a few extracts may 
be given : 

"Ambleside, Monday evening. 

" My dear B 

"I have seen Liverpool, Ulverston, and 
Biggs. . . . During the last two days I have 
been among the lakes. Some of them are nearly 
as wild, and others more soft and beautiful than 
anything of the same kind in Scotland. I crossed 
Barrowdell Pass yesterday— a very hard pull it was, 
but the view from the head was magnificent. In 
coming down I really thought I would have broken 



170 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

my neck. ... I spent some time in Grassmere 
churchyard. Wordsworth sleeps there, with a 
number of his friends, and many of the members 
of his own family around him. The sight is affect- 
ing enough. Afterwards, I saw the great poet's 
sister — the companion of his rambles. She has 
been crazy for twenty years, is now very old and 
frail, and when I saw her she was drawn about in 
a wheeled chair. 

" We called on Miss Martineau a few hours ago. 
No one from her appearance would suspect her ot 
the sin of authorship. She told a melancholy 
story of 'Jane Eyre,' who is unwell. 

•J> «L» vL» vjx «J> 

«T» «x» *T» "T* ^> 

There is to be a party at Martineau's to-morrow 
night. Nichol and I are invited, and I suppose 
must show face. I will be in Halifax on Saturday. 
Should you find time to drop a few lines for me I 
would take it kind. Should you do so address to 
me at the Post Office. Good-night. 

" Yours affectionately, 

"A. Smith." 



A LIFE DRAMA. 171 

" Oriental Bank Corporation, 
" Walbrook y London, Saturday morning. 
" Since I wrote you I have seen a considerable 
part of England. After finishing the lake country, 
we came through a part of Yorkshire, containing 
the finest scenery and the stupidest people it has 
been my lot to witness. I have seen Bradford, 
Halifax, Manchester — where we spent a day with 
John Stobes Smith — Sherwood Forest, Notting- 
ham, etc. I met ' Festus ' at Nottingham. Al- 
though I have modified my opinion of him vastly, 
I could not but look upon him with eager interest. 
. . . The day after I met him we visited New- 
stead Abbey together. ... I have been a 
week in London, and have been enjoying myself 
in the best manner I can. Last Saturday I was at 
a literary party, and was much amused by a girl 

who fastened upon me there. She is a Miss 

She professed vast admiration for my bridge scene. 
Later in the evening she laid me completely on my 
back, after this fashion : ( I am going to ask you a 
question, Mr. Smith, and you need not answer it 



172 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

unless you choose, you know. Would it not have 
been as well to have married Violet and Walter at 
once, and not have sent them through such a career 
of sin and misery ? ' I did not think the time and 
place was suitable for an explanation, so I parried 
the question as dexterously as I could. On Wed- 
nesday last I drove some forty miles south of Lon- 
don, to dine with Martin F. Tupper, author of 
' Proverbial Philosophy/ . . . He lives in a 
most beautiful part of the country, and gives good 
dinners : two virtues which I hope will cover his 
literary sins. I called on Herbert Spencer and 
Lewes yesterday. spencer is a quiet, Scotch- 
looking, thoughtful man. He wishes me to go to 
the opera with him next week. . . . Lewes 
and I go to Windsor next Saturday. To-day, 
Anderson and I go to Buckinghamshire. He 
returns on Monday, and I go to Yendys' to stay 
a few days, so I won't be in London till next 
Tuesday. My new edition appears on Wednesday 
first. Anderson sends his compliments, and 

" I remain, yours affectionately, A. Smith." 



A LIFE DRAMA. 173 

For preparing this new edition of a A Life 
Drama " for the press he was handsomely remune- 
rated by Mr. Bogue, whose entire conduct towards 
the young author was most honourable and 
generous. After paying him the stipulated ;£ioo 
for the MS., he, before Smith left London, gave 
him ^50 additional as a present, besides a number 
of valuable books It is to this £50 that Smith 
refers in the following letter. 

London, July 14, 1853. 

"My dear Brisbane, — 

" I got yours an hour ago, and very glad 
was I to get it. I could not think what had kept 
you silent so long. I have been running about the 
country a good deal of late. I just returned from 
M'Dougal this morning, . . . Since I wrote 
to you I have spent some time at Cheltenham 
with Yendys. Neither he nor his wife are in 
good health. His book is to be out in October. 
I have also been down at Cambridge, and dined 
in the great hall with the professors and dons. 



174 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Very good fellows all of them. I saw a good 
deal of the person who reviewed me in the Spec- 
tator, as also the man who worked me off in the 
Nonconformist. I have not seen your brother 
yet, but mean to try and see him to-morrow. . . 
I will be in Paisley on Monday first, and will 
be at your service any time after that you please, 
I will see you in the course of next week. I 
got the fifty pounds from Bogue to day. . . . 
It is amusing to see Hugh (Macdonald) coming 
out a la Gilfillan. The verses are good ; but I 
think, also, he has made rather too much of them. 
Biggs makes his appearance in the Critic on 

the 1 8th. 

" Yours, 

"A. Smith." 

In the course of the following week, he called 
on me as promised in the above letter, and w T e 
arranged for a short excursion together to the 
highlands. Accordingly, in a few days, we went 
to Aberfoyle, and thence to the Trossachs. As 
he now resided with his family at Williamsburgh, 



A LIFE DRAMA. 175 

we only met about once each week for some time. 
He felt too lonely, however, to enjoy residence 
in Paisley. His friends were all in Glasgow, and 
his visits to the city soon became more frequent. 
It was about this time he received an invitation 
from the Duke of Argyle to visit him at his castle 
at Inverary. In compliance with this invitation, 
he spent a week at the ducal palace, and very 
much enjoyed the society of his grace, and of 
Lord Dufferin, who also happened to be there at the 
time, and after his return humorously contrasted 
this visit to Inverary with his first, on the occasion 
of our second pedestrian trip to the highlands. 

His fame had now spread far. An edition of 
double the usual number of copies, had been sold 
of " A Life Drama " in the course of a few months, 
and a second had appeared. Foreign journals 
had also made his name favourably known on the 
continent ; while in America his book was being 
sold in thousands. He now began a literary 
career, by undertaking the editorship of a maga- 
zine called the Glasgow Miscellany, which was 



176 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

started by Mr. Robert Buchanan, editor of the 
Glasgow Sentinel newspaper, and father of 
Robert Buchanan the poet. This literary effort, 
however, like all such undertakings in Glasgow, 
proved a failure. And on Smith accepting a 
situation which necessitated his leaving the city, 
it came suddenly to an end. 



C HAPTER I X. 

fax €ftinbm$). 

( ' Thy sons, Edina, social, kind, 

With open arms the stranger hail ; 
Their views enlarg'd, their lib'ral mind 

Above the narrow, rural vale ; 
Attentive still to sorrow's wail, 

Or modest merit's silent claim : 
And never may their sources fail! 
And never envy blot their name ! " 

Burns. 

r I A HE secretaryship of the Edinburgh univer- 
sity, which now became vacant, was just 
such a situation as Mr. Smith had long desired 
to occupy : and being encouraged by several of 
his friends to make application for it, he im- 
mediately did so. There was a considerable 
number of candidates for the office, however ; 
but having secured the influence of James Hed- 
derwick, Robert Chambers, the Duke of Argyle, 

N 



173 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

and Duncan McLaren — then Lord Provost, and 
afterwards Member of Parliament for the city, — 
he became the successful applicant. The post was 
confessedly conferred on him in consideration 
of his poetic abilities. He possessed, however, 
every other qualification necessary for a proper 
discharge of its duties, and entered the univer- 
sity as its secretary in the beginning of the 
year 1854. After he had thus settled in Edin- 
burgh we corresponded for a while, almost 
weekly, in writing. The following extracts from 
one of his letters at this time give a glimpse 
of him in beginning life in the Scottish capital. 

" Edinburgh. 
" My dear Tom, 

" I got your welcome letter the other 

day, and am glad to think there is a chance 

of your being through here so soon. . . . 

I feel Edinburgh very dreary occasionally — a 

sad want of old habits, places, and companions. 

By my teetotalism there hangs a tale ; and a 

year hence this abstinence will either be the 



IN EDIXnURGH. 179 

most heroic or the most insane proceeding I 
ever engaged in. 

" Does your next session take place in Edin- 
burgh or Glasgow ? I think you mentioned 
to me some time ago that you thought you might 
require to come here. I hope it may be so. Did 
you see ' Festus, a criticism by Murillo/ in 
'Hogg'? and what do you think of it? 
. . . The hint you give at the end of your 
letter concerning other matters I can under- 
stand. Perhaps as far as you are presently 
concerned it is a pity — perhaps not. We have 
been comrades and have marched together some 
eight stages of life's journey with a pretty good 
knowledge of one another's burdens ; and I sus- 
pect both of us are now in most precarious 
circumstances — on the very skirts of the skirmish ; 
and a few years must either bring us success or 
defeat. Such matters are not so important 
now as they were a few years ago ; but they 
are matters which letter writing cannot do justice 
to. Were w r e on a still hill-side, or on the tramp, 

N 2 



180 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

with a white road stretching miles before us, or 
in a gloaming room, with a window opening on 
the sea, we might talk of such like affairs, but 
assuredly they are not to be written about. 
For myself I confess the future makes me often 
afraid — one sees so much in himself to fear, and 
so much out of himself. Remember me to C. 
and C, and believe me, 

" Yours faithfully, 

"A. Smith." 

It was my privilege to spend a pleasant week 
as his guest early in the following summer ; 
and having gone again to Edinburgh in autumn 
to complete my studies, we had several delightful 
rambles together to Lasswade, Roslin, and other 
places around the city, and enjoyed many happy 
evenings in his lodgings. New and genial friends 
were gathering around him, and the dreariness 
of which he had complained shortly after leav- 
ing Glasgow, ceased to be felt by him. Sydney 
Dobell was then residing at Corstorphine, and 



IN EDINBURGH. 181 

between the two young poets a close, cordial 
friendship had commenced. One of my happiest 
reminiscences of that time is that of accompany- 
ing Smith on one occasion to Corstorphine, and 
being introduced by him to the author of " The 
Roman/' whom we found along with his still 
delicate, but most amiable wife, gazing with much 
admiration from the drawing-room window, on a 
gorgeous sunset. As fruit of this friendship, and 
these evening visits to Corstorphine, there appeared 
in the following year, 1855, "War Sonnets," a 
little volume or poetical brochure on the Crimean 
war, the joint composition of the two friends. 

Having at length left Edinburgh on the com- 
pletion of my studies, we still continued to cor- 
respond frequently by letter. There is nothing 
in that correspondence, however, of more than 
private interest, till the following was re- 
ceived : — 

" December 1st, 1856. 
"My dear Brisbane, 

"I got your letter the other day, and was 



1 82 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

glad to hear that you had got yourself com- 
fortably located. I expected to see you every 
day here ; but I then thought that your time 
being short you would find at the last you 
had ten thousand times too many things to do, 
and so just push on to Aberdeenshire. I trust 
you will find your new mode of life pleasant, 
and exciting enough to keep your blood warm 
during the winter. 

"The newspaper came with the account of 
your ordination. I could hardly help smiling 
at the thought that, much has come to both 
of us, which, walking about the outskirts of 
Glasgow some ten years ago, we looked for- 
ward to with great interest, and perhaps some 
little doubt ; and how much a matter of course 
it seems now ! 

" I don't know if you have seen in the 
papers the sudden death of Mr. Bogue, the 
publisher. He died about a week ago. I had 
a letter just a few days before his death from 
him, and it was arranged that I should make 



IN EDINBURGH. 183 

my appearance for the second time in spring. 
Whether Tilt (his old partner, who is now con- 
ducting the business) will publish me, I don't 
know. I don't apprehend any serious obstacle 
in the way of getting a publisher. 

" I inclose a little poem which I printed in 
the National Magazine, and should be glad to 
hear what you think of it. I am at present 
busy with an essay on the Scottish Ballads, 
for a volume of Edinburgh essays, on the same 
plan as those volumes issued by the Universities 
of Cambridge and Oxford. I must have it 
finished before I leave this for the holidays at 
Christmas, as the volume is advertised for the 
second week of January. 

" Many thanks for your invitation at Christ- 
mas, being the third I have to Aberdeenshire 
at this moment. To each and all of them I 
must express my gratitude, and decline. A 
certain lady from the Hebrides is to be in 
Glasgow at that time, so I cannot come. 
If D lies on the line of railway from 



1 84 ALEXANDER SMITH, 

Inverness, I may perhaps drop in upon you 
in April. Take a wife, Tom. Now is your 
opportunity. You have a position, a house, 
and everything ready. 

"There is nothing new here. We have 
Thackeray lecturing, and Edinburgh crammed 
itself into the music hall, and ruffed and ap- 
plauded most lustily. 

"R is still in Edinburgh. He says he 

does not think he will go forward to the 
Church at all. 

"I suppose you won't be South for some 
time. Write to me and let me know how you 
get on. 

"Yours faithfully, 

"A. Smith." 

But as we were now both busily engaged in 
the work to which we had respectively devoted 
ourselves, our correspondence by letter became 
gradually less frequent ; and I had not been, 
favoured with an epistle from him for some 



IN EDINBURGH. 185 

considerable time, when the following, which 
explains itself, came to hand : — 

"My dear Brisbane, 

" I know I have acted very badly in not 
writing earlier ; but for my sin I must plead, 
in extenuation^ a multitude of good intentions 
and, fortunately, some little business. I have 
been arranging matters for a certain great 
event, which has, I confess, knocked all minor 
things out of my head. The wedding takes 
place on Monday first, To you and to all 
other friends of my bachelorhood I wave a fare- 
well, and trust that in that other life I may 
know you all again. 

" I have but little news. I am in press 
again. This time my publishers are the Mac- 
millans of Cambridge, who give me ^"250 for 
the book, the copyright to remain with me. 
When they make the same amount of profit, 
the profits are to be equally divided, so that 
if the thing is at all a success in a commer- 



1 86 ALEXANDER SMITH, 

cial point of view, I will gain more by it. I 
expect ;£ioo or ,£50 from America also. The 
people who printed the i Life Drama ' have 
been written on the subject, and I expect an 
answer soon. I think Macmillan's offer ex- 
tremely liberal ; and taking the time I have 
been in Edinburgh, in which the greater portion 
of the work has been done, and the little wind- 
falls of money for other literary work, . . . 
in conjunction with my salary at college, there 
is a tolerable prospect that, with thriftiness and 
economy, Flora and I will be comfortable enough. 
" I can't tell you how strangely I feel in my pre- 
sent circumstances. Happy, of course ; but happy 
with a kind or degree of fear and trembling at the 
heart of it that makes it more intense, while it 
troubles and shakes it. What the future is I do 
not know ; and I cannot command it. When a 
man is alone, he does not care much : with the 
earth beneath his feet, the sky above his head, and 
a decent kind of conscience in him, he scrambles 
along pretty jollily ; but when another nature is 



IN EDIXBURGH. 187 

bound up with his own — who must accept the same 
fate, whether of bliss or bale, smile in the same 
sunshine, bow the head to the same storm of driv- 
ing rain — why it does make one feel a little anxious. 
But hang it ! — these ghosts ought to slink into their 
graves. What have they to do showing their empty 
sides and ugly faces among orange blossoms and 
the silver voices of the marriage bells ? 

" I am sorry that our plans will not allow us to 
come round by Inverness, so that we shall not have 
the pleasure of seeing you, as I at one time hoped. 
We leave Skye on Tuesday by the steamer, and 
mean to stay a few days at Oban, and reach Edin- 
burgh on Friday or Saturday night. F. has never 
been at the Trossachs, and I expect great delight 
in a trip there when the summer session closes ; 
and I have also a desire to establish myself for 
some few weeks at Strone or Kilmun. Is there 
any chance of your being in Edinburgh soon ? — 
With best wishes, I remain, yours affectionately, 

a A. Smith." 

His marriage, referred to in the above letter, 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



took place in the spring of 1857. The lady to 
whom he was then united was Miss Flora Mao 
donald, daughter of Mr. Macdonald, of Ord, Skye, 
and related in blood to the heroine of that name ; 
and connected also with Horatio Maculloch, the 
painter, between whom and Smith a very cordial 
friendship existed. 

In the course of little more than a year after 
his marriage, he removed from Edinburgh to sweet 
Gesto Villa, at Wardie, near Granton, where on 
two occasions I had the pleasure of lodging over 
a night with him. 

The above letter also makes reference to the 
publication of " City Poems " this same year. This, 
though to discerning readers the best of all Mr. 
Smith's poetical works, did not meet with such 
success as his first volume. From various causes 
the tide of popular sentiment had now ceased to 
run so strongly in his favour as it had once done. 
He had been accused of the sin of extensive 
plagiarism by some, and condemned by others as 
too sensational. 



IN EDINBURGH. 189 

To the latter charge fullest expression was given 
in a satirical poem written by Professor Aytoun, 
and published in 1855, under the title — "Firmilian: 
a Spasmodic Tragedy, by T. Percy Jones." That 
work proved a decided hit : it burst like a bomb in 
the circle of literature, and executed considerable 
damage on the reputation of several poets. This 
it did more, perhaps, on the ground of its being 
well timed, than because of intrinsic poetic worth. 
It was certainly, however, characterized by great 
pungency and superlative smartness, in exposing 
what it termed the " spasmodic " school of poetry 
to unsparing ridicule. And no one in reading it 
could fail to perceive that Gilfillan, as a critic, and 
Bailey, Dobell, and Smith, as poets, were the chief 
dramatis personcz ; while Carlyle and Ruskin, as 
prose writers, did not entirely escape being repre- 
sented. 

Smith was w r ont to laugh heartily over several 
passages of this book which most directly referred 
to himself; always spoke of it as a production of 
true genius, and never bore any malicious grudge 



190 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

against its author. But, at the same time, he did 
not altogether enjoy its allusions to himself: indeed, 
no man in his circumstances could do so. Nothing 
so prejudices the mass of men against a public 
man or author as, though excessive, deserved, and 
so successful, ridicule. And as this was achieved 
in " Firmilian " with superlative cleverness, public 
sentiment which had, perhaps, become already 
sated with its own over-rapturous applause at 
" A Life Drama,'' began to look shy at its author. 
While thus his popularity had commenced to 
decline, the other less just, and even less scrupulous 
and unmerciful attack upon his fame, told with far 
more effect than it would otherwise have done. 
The charge of plagiarism could happily be an- 
swered with the common weapon of fair argument, 
and not a few pens voluntarily fought powerfully 
thus in Smith's defence. While Shirley Brooks, in 
a smart characteristic paper in Punch, did him, 
perhaps, fully as much service as any or all others. 
Many generous friends, also, from different quarters, 
wrote consolingly and encouragingly to him private 



IN EDINBURGH. 



191 



letters of assurance that this was only a passing 
cloud of infamy which would soon pass away. 

The ridicule of " Firmilian," however, though 
seemingly less harmless, could not be so well 
answered — first, from its very nature ; and, further, 
because unfortunately it was in a good measure 
deserved ; — and the felicitously conceived nick- 
name of " Spasmodic" was a barbed arrow which, 
hitting, stuck. Smith bore this double attack 
with surprising equanimity and great fortitude, 
while it both injured him and did him good. 
Commercially, it marred the sale of his books, and 
so pecuniarily he suffered by it ; while, at the same 
time, it sobered his poetic genius, and purged it of 
the sins of his youth, His own spirit had, indeed, 
of itself begun to recoil against the spasmodic 
character of his first book, but the chastising hand 
of Aytoun confirmed his repentance. Nor was he 
the only one who profited by " Firmilian" — that, 
though an unmerciful, was a well-timed and most 
salutary satire, which laughed out of popular 
favour a very unwholesome kind of poetry which 



192 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

had already received too much countenance, and 
was corrupting the literature of our age and 
country. The rising generation of poets were 
rapidly renouncing the simplicity of nature, and, 
if not spasmodic, were at least too sensational. 
Genius seemed too often intoxicated, or fevered, 
rather than inspired. The muse of song, forsaking 
ordinary human life, endeavoured to lure us away 
to a shadowy mist-magnifying land bordering on 
the realms of spiritual existence, where men that 
were not men, and women who were not women, 
but male and female demi-gods, or semi-demons — 
a mind-begotten hybrid race — now strutted rather 
than walked the stage of life, mouthing "great 
swelling words of vanity ;" and anon endeavoured 
to scale the heavens and talk with the celestials 
familiarly as equals ; or to dive into the abysmal 
depths of the nether world, where their eyes lighted 
up with an unusual kindly look. The life 
depicted in these poets' pages had neither the 
dignity of tragedy nor the sprightliness of pan- 
tomime ; it often, however, partook more of the 



IN EDINBURGH. 193 

nature of the latter than of the former ; was pan- 
tomime with pantaloon and clown, — the most 
human elements, after all, of that species of per- 
formance, left out. All the stars in the poetical 
firmament were spirtively threatening to become 
comets. To shine seemed nothing ; to glare was 
grand. What matters might have come to under 
these pigmy Miltons and Dantes it is hard to say, 
had not Aytoun and others called them at length 
to a more sober mood. 

Unfortunately, however, " Firmilian" happened 
to hit most heavily those who had transgressed 
least — Gilfillan and Smith. Aytoun seemed to 
reserve all his sharpest strokes for his own country- 
men. Gilfillan, especially, was both most cruelly 
and unjustly dealt with : while of Smith it might 
be said that he was not only the youngest and 
least guilty of the whole school, but the first, 
besides, who himself saw his error and resolved to 
abandon it. But treated as he was, he showed true 
nobleness of character in entertaining at the time 
no feelings of animosity towards his merciless 

O 



194 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

reprover. And it is very pleasant indeed to read 
in his essay on " Sydney Dobell," published among 
" Last Leaves," with how quiet and gentle a spirit 
he could, ten years afterwards, refer to "Firmilian" 
— its influence and its author ; while it is not less 
pleasant to know that Aytoun, not very long 
after he so unsparingly lashed the author of " A 
Life Drama," extended towards him a most 
generous, friendly hand, introducing him to the 
pages of " Blackwood," and that a cordial friend- 
ship existed between them till the one followed 
the other with an interval of only a few months to 
the quiet grave. 

" City Poems," which appears to be presently 
out of print, has, if we mistake not, been gradually 
rising in public estimation, and is destined to rise 
still higher, and take the very first place among all 
Smith's poetical works. After its publication, he 
immediately devoted himself to the production of 
a historical poem, " Edwin of Deira." But mis- 
fortune still followed him ; for though he spent 
four years in its composition, Alfred Tennyson's 



IN EDINBURGH. 195 

"Idylls of the King" — a kindred subject — 
appeared before its publication, and so rendered 
Smith again liable to the suspicion of imitation, 
besides bringing him into unfortunate comparison 
with the laureate. Not that there were any 
genuine or great grounds for such comparison, 
however, being made ; for the two works bear 
little or no resemblance to each other. Tennyson's 
is much the larger of the two poems, there is 
greater variety of character also in it, and he takes 
a firmer hold of his subject, and gives to it more 
depth and compactness ; but Smith's " Edwin " 
sparkles more with gems than the " Idylls " do. 
But there was only occasion for comparison in 
the sequence of the two works — nothing more. 
And, after all, the want of acceptance by the 
public in Smith's case, did not, perhaps, result so 
much from the publication of Tennyson's book at 
this time, as from the fact that public favour had 
meanwhile, for a season at least, left him as a poet. 
It is very questionable, indeed, if at this period of 
his career any poem published by Smith would 

O 2 



t 9 6 ALEXANDER SMITH. 

have met with a greater sale than "Edwin" did; 
unless it had been a veritable " Paradise Lost." 
The work is not without great intrinsic merits. It 
is by far the most classical in construction and 
composition of all his poems. It breathes also a 
more healthy spirit than of any them. But in the 
literary as well as the physical world, when the 
tide recedes a man must just patiently wait its 
return. It was, however, perhaps, so far un- 
fortunate that " Edwin of Deira," notwithstanding 
all its merits, was, for immediate wide acceptance 
by the public, rather too unlike Mr. Smith's 
previous poetical productions. Those who had 
admired his earlier volumes so highly, could not 
all be expected to admire this one, in w T hich the 
most peculiar traits of his original genius had 
almost entirely disappeared. But, further, not- 
withstanding its great merits, it does not, on the 
whole, equal " City Poems," in poetic value. The 
most valuable thing in "Edwin of Deira" was the 
promise which it gave of what the author might 
yet have done, in this, to him, new domain of 



IN EDINBURGH. 



197 



poesy, had years and leisure been allowed him. 
With such promise it was very rich indeed. That 
is an article in literature, however, which the 
general public have neither much discernment to 
perceive nor inclination to pay for. And it is 
still more to be regretted that neither his critics 
nor himself seemed to perceive this very clearly. 
So, as he neither gained pecuniarily, nor appeared 
to increase his fame by the publication of this 
book, he became, it is to be feared, a little dis- 
heartened — lost some measure of the passionate 
love for his harp which he once felt, and im- 
mediately turned his attention more to prose 
composition. " Edwin of Deira" was his last 
poetic production of any considerable length. 
He never abandoned poetry, however ; nor could 
he do so, — 

" For it was his nature 
To blossom into song, as 'tis a tree's 
To leaf itself in April." 

But his future poetical productions w r ere confined 
to small pieces for the magazines, with the 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



exception of a poem on " Edinburgh " which he 
had on hand, and which had only progressed a 
short way, when he died. 

His chief prose work is " Dreamthorp," a volume 
of essays having few equals in the English 
language. In it he celebrates the praises of the 
country, as in his poems he had done those of the 
town. It is by this volume that he will live 
longest as an exquisite prose writer, and on it 
his fame in that department of literature will 
mainly depend. It gained for him the name of 
Essayist. 

In 1865 he published, next, "A Summer in 
Skye," two volumes of very racy and graphic 
sketching of natural scenery and men and manners, 
which afford very pleasant reading. The work, 
however, is slightly marred in unity by extraneous 
matter at the beginning and close. These two 
parts constitute excrescences which it is desirable 
may be removed from future editions of this other- 
wise exquisite work. 

In the same year also he edited an edition of 



IN EDINBURGH. 199 

" Burns " for Macmillan, with a memoir and 
glossary ; and continued, from month to month to 
supply " Good Words " with his only prose tale, 
entitled " Alfred Hagart's Household," which has 
since been published in a separate form in two 
volumes. 

Numerous smaller articles from his pen had 
meantime graced the columns of several news- 
papers and the pages of sundry magazines and 
Encyclopedias. Some of the magazine articles 
have, since his death, been reprinted in the 
volume entitled " Last Leaves." These works 
greatly increased his literary reputation. As a 
prose writer, in fact, he had now become a great 
and growing favourite with the public, and as a 
genial and wise moralist he was rapidly rising 
to a first place among British essayists. But 
the work performed by him during the last two 
years had been too great for any man regularly 
occupied, as he was, in an office daily from 
ten o'clock a.m. till four o'clock p.m. ; and con- 
sequently, he began to suffer from an over-wrought 



ALEXANDER SMITH. 



brain. Indeed, during the greater part of these 
two years he was labouring under such a malady, 
without knowing what ailed him, or taking the 
only means of cure for this distemper — entire 
mental rest. As evidence of this, it is very painful 
now to read such reflections as the following in 
the second volume of " A Summer in Skye " : — 
"When I came up here a month or two ago, I 
was tired, jaded, ill at ease ; I put spots in the 
sun, I flecked the loveliest blue of summer sky 
with bars of darkness ; I felt the weight of the 
weary hours. Each morning called me as a 
slave-driver calls his slave. In sleep there was 
no refreshment ; for in dream the weary day 
repeated itself yet more wearily. I was nervous, 
apprehensive of evil, irritable — ill in fact." (p. 214,) 
During all the following year, he continued more 
or less in this melancholy condition, and all the 
while was doing more mental work than pre- 
viously. Surely none of his friends who knew 
this, but because he looked rosy all the while, 
" rather fleered at than sympathised with him," 



IN EDINBURGH. 201 

"thinking his complaint some form of mere 
hypochondria," had ever felt themselves the bane- 
ful effects of an exhausted brain. How one now 
wishes he had earlier told all to some experienced 
physician. For two years his holidays only 
tended to delay the fatal hour. It was a year 
of entire, and not two months of partial, rest he 
needed. At length the crisis came. And on 
November 20, 1866, he lay down upon his bed. 
His illness, which had now assumed the form of 
gastric fever, became complicated with diphtheria, 
and, after deceitful symptoms of recovery, lapsed 
into typhoid fever ; so gradually sinking under 
the baneful influences of these malignant maladies, 
despite the skill of the best of the far-famed 
physicians of the Scottish capital, and the most 
assiduous care of those who loved him most, he 
breathed, at length, his last breath, in his house 
at Wardie, at nine o'clock on the morning of 
5th, January, 1867, at the age of thirty-seven years 
and four days. 

The news of his early death affected with un- 



202 ALEXANDER SMITH, 

usual sorrow the whole literary and reading world. 
But still deeper far was he mourned by his 
relatives and numerous personal friends ; for he 
had been a truly good, genial, generous, loving 
and most loveable man — such a friend as in this 
world is too rarely found, but once found can 
never be forgotten, and though lost by death 
must ever be missed and mourned. 

On ioth January his body was borne to 
Warriston cemetery by sorrowing bereaved ones ; 
and as they laid it there in the grave, "the cold 
but rich light of the early sunset seemed in 
melancholy harmony with the last scene of his 
bright and brief career;" but brief as, indeed, that 
career was, a sable company gathered again, 
about two months afterwards, around that grave, 
told of a briefer still, as they laid beside the 
father the remains of his first-born and much 
loved little daughter, of whose nativity he had 
sung most touchingly in his exquisite lyric of 
" Blaavin." 

His last resting-place is now marked by a 



IN EDINBURGH. 203 

memorial of loving hearts. In the beginning of 
1868, was erected there a beautiful Runic cross 
monument, with appropriate embellishments, 
the design of which was furnished as a tribute " 
of affection by Mr. James Drummond, R.S.A., 
and containing a medallion likeness of the de- 
parted, which was executed by Mr. William 
Brodie, sculptor, another friend. This monument 
bears the simple inscription, " Alexander Smith, 
Poet and Essayist. Erected by some of his 
personal friends." 

But, after all, his noblest monument is that 
which he himself erected — his life. Seldom if 
ever, indeed, has one so eminently gifted with a 
poetic temperament and genius, manifested such 
self-government, or lived a life so well balanced, 
beautiful, and blameless. That life is the best 
lesson he has taught us. It is a valuable legacy 
to all, but especially to aspiring young men 
and all candidates in literature. May many such 
profit by it ! 



Butler and Tanner, 

The Set-wood Printing Works, 

Frone, and London. 



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